I remember walking down the street in Michalovce, and walking up to me comes my two and a half years younger classmate Spanar. He began calling me a smelly Jew. I grabbed him and drenched him in a puddle. It had just rained, so I really made a mess of him. When he came home, he evidently complained to his parents about me. However, his parents were very decent people, Protestants and opponents of Fascism. Mr. Spanar was a respected doctor. The Spanars came to our place the next day all dressed up in their Sunday best, along with their son, and proceeded to fervently apologize for their son’s behavior.
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Displaying 1801 - 1830 of 50826 results
ladislav porjes
After the summer holidays I returned to my grandparents in Zilina. Grandpa Salamon clasped his hands together and called out to my grandmother, ‘Julinko, come see what kind of a monkey those Moskovics have made out of our Lacinko in the East!’ He took my grandma’s scissors out of her sewing machine, cut off my payes, threw out the yarmulka and tore off my tabard with fringes. He even confiscated my glasses, that I wasn’t to make a fool of myself, and forbade me to move my arms while walking.
In my mother’s home town, in Michalovce, my parents decided that over the summer holidays they’d make a faithful Orthodox Jew out of me. I had to grow payes, I got a yarmulka for my head, and they put an under-tabard with fringes that stuck out over my short pants. They even hired me a private religion teacher.
When I was older, I was allowed into my father’s study, into which no one else was allowed aside from my grandma, grandpa and my aunts who did the cleaning there. I remember the leather chair and sofa, the dark furniture, black and white marble table clock, an ‘Ehrbar’ piano, ‘Rosenthal’ porcelain vases, and a huge seashell on the piano, in which one could constantly hear the roar of the sea. On the wall, in a gold frame, hung an oil painting by the Jewish painter Kaufmann depicting an argument between a rabbi and a priest. A charcoal drawing also hung there – a double portrait of my beautiful dark-eyed and dark-haired young mother, and my happily smiling, more than twenty years older father. The charcoal portrait was created by a noted Hungarian artist, whose name I’ve forgotten.
Fiction and poetry from Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Schiller, Heine and Thomas Mann. Everything was in the original language as opposed to the Slovak and Hungarian that was used in my grandparents’ homes. I had a governess though, so reading the originals gave me no problems.
Both families, the Moskovics and the Porjeses, cooked kosher. There were separate dishes for dairy foods, separate dishes for meat, so as to keep it strictly separated.
I grew up with my grandparents – partly the Porjeses took care of me, my father’s parents in Zilina, where we spoke Slovak and German, and partly the Moskovics took care of me, my mother’s parents in Michalovce, with whom I spoke the Zemplin dialect and Yiddish. The conditions in both families, as far as religion goes, were quite different. The Moskovics were Orthodox, while the Porjeses were Neolog Jews.
Many years after the war, a letter from some lady came to the radio station where I was working, in which she wrote that she had heard my name on the radio, and wanted to know if I’m the Lacinko who she had once nursed. She sent me a photo of me as a two-year-old little boy with my father – actually thanks to her I have my one and only reminder of my father. Ilona had married a police sergeant somewhere near the border of Slovakia and Moravia. I set out to see her. In order to surprise her, I didn’t let her know ahead of time that I was intending to visit her. When I arrived, I met her husband, this man on crutches, who told me that she had died shortly before. He at least took me to her grave.
My parents met each other through a matchmaker. Back then my father came a-courting to Michalovce from Zilina. It was however all more complicated: my father originally wanted to court my mother’s older sister Paula, who the Moskovics of course wanted to marry off first. They promised my father 100,000 crowns as a dowry for Paula. But my father fell so in love with my mother that he and Grandpa Moskovic agreed that he’d marry my mother, but would however give up the right to a dowry. Today it seems like from a romantic novel – love at first sight. And their love was so strong that my father married my mother even without money. But he was afraid as to what his parents would say, that they’d bawl him out for letting himself be cheated. That’s why he had Grandpa Moskovic write him up a fictional confirmation that my grandpa owes him 100,000 Czechoslovak crowns. In short, my parents’ meeting is a truly romantic tale!
My great-grandma took a chicken, tied its legs together, and began making circles above my head with it. All the while she was mumbling something in Hebrew, which I didn’t understand at all. When she finished with this ceremony, she took the chicken and ritually slit its throat. She had to kill the chicken, as it was actually this ‘gepore’ – a sacrifice that was supposed to rid me of all toxins and my pain. I was laughing to myself at it, I didn’t believe it. I believed a week later, when the boils disappeared. I was completely cured and the boils never returned! So my miraculous grandmother thus convinced me of her abilities.
He was Pavol Hospodar, a local farmer, Greek Orthodox and an opponent of the pro-Fascist regime. She had to work for a long time to persuade him to agree. From the beginning to the end, he behaved in an immensely decent manner toward her. He was a ‘white crow’ during times when other Aryanizers were informing on their Jewish fellow citizens in hiding to the Guardists [see Hlinka-Guards] [8], who then arranged their transport into the gas. As direct informers they raked in the houses and entire property of their victims, to whom they had originally offered themselves in the role of saviors. Grandma survived the war; she hid with goyim in a so-called bunker.
When I was not quite three years old, my father died from consequences of an amateurishly treated wound that he had gotten on the Italian front [7] during World War I, where he had fought as a cadet for one year.
rachel persitz
My grandmother and grandfather on my mother's side, Haim Lagotskiy and Riva Lagotskaya, lived in the small town of Chernobyl, Kiev province, in the 1860s. The town had Ukrainian and Jewish inhabitants. There were 30 or 40 Jewish families. They were craftsmen and tradesmen: shoemakers, tinsmiths, carpenters, and so on. There was a synagogue and a cheder in town.
My grandfather's family was very poor. My grandfather was a worker. He could build a brick house, construct a stove; and he was a good joiner and carpenter. He worked for richer people: merchants, the bourgeois and landlords. He was extremely honest and decent. Once he was replacing floors and discovered a treasure of jewelry and ancient golden coins. He immediately called the master showing him what he had found. The master thanked my grandfather and generously gave him one golden coin. He was very happy about the treasure and about my grandfather's honesty. My grandmother couldn't forget this incident for a few years and said, 'You should have taken a few coins, look how poor we are!' My grandfather replied, 'How could I lie to my poretz [lord in Yiddish]?
They had a garden and a kitchen garden and kept livestock. They lived in a small house with a thatched roof. I remember this house well. There was a stove in the center of it. There were two rooms and a small kitchen. There were dried herbs and bunches of onions on the walls. There was a cellar to store potatoes and other food for winter. The furniture in the house was plain: tables, chairs, beds and a big wooden wardrobe.
There were a few religious books in the house. The boys received elementary religious education. They went to cheder.
Later they all became shoemakers.
My grandparents were very religious. Every morning my grandfather put on his tallit and tefillin and prayed, pronouncing strange words, as I recall. [The interviewee is talking about prayers in Hebrew.] He never worked on Saturdays, even if his employer wasn't very happy about it. They observed the Sabbath. My grandmother always tried to cook something delicious, even during the hard years of the Civil War [1918-1921]. Sometimes we just had plain potato pancakes, but they were so good. They celebrated all religious holidays: Pesach, Rosh Hashanah and Chanukkah.
My mother's older brother, Meyr, born in 1885, and his wife, Haya, lived in Chernobyl. His older son, Shaya, perished at the front during World War II. His second son, Zyunia, returned from the war as an invalid and died in 1954.
Meyr, his wife and their two daughters were in Kustanai in evacuation.
My mother's brother Zisl was born in 1887. During the war Zisl, his wife Rosa and their two daughters, Lisa and Sarah, evacuated to the Northern Caucasus. I don't know exactly what happened to them there - whether they perished in occupation or starved to death. They never returned from evacuation.
Zisl's older son Zyunia was at the front and was awarded the 'Order of the Red Star'.
Kiev was bombed, and we dug up a shelter in the yard where we could hide during air raids.
My sister's husband, Bencion, was summoned to the army on the second day of the war.
Genia and I decided that we had to evacuate, and Genia received a boat ticket for the evacuation of all members of her family. My father didn't want to leave. He was convinced that the Germans were civilized people and weren't going to do Jews any harm. He ignored whatever my sister and I told him and stayed in Kiev.
At the beginning of July we boarded the boat and sailed down the Dnieper River. There was my sister Genia, I, my Aunt Zlata and her son, and my three cousins: Sonia, Zina and Basia, the daughters of Aunt Rohl. Zina and Basia were single, and Sonia's husband was at the front. Sonia's little son was also traveling with us. In Dnepropetrovsk we changed for a train heading to Krasnodarskiy region. We were traveling under terrible conditions - in freight railcars for coal transportation. Genia had brought her and her husband's clothes, and when the train stopped we got off to exchange clothes for food. We reached our destination and settled down in Nefyodovka village, in Krasnodarskiy region [about 1,500 km from Kiev]. I didn't want to stay there. There was no school in Nefyodovka, and I didn't have work. Genia and I went to Timashovskaya village. I worked for a few weeks at the local school. Aunt Zlata and her sisters stayed in Nefyodovka. When the Germans began to approach Krasnodar, they moved on to the Caucasus and settled down in Baku.
When we were in Timashovkaya we received a letter from my father. He wrote to us that Genia's husband Bencion Obomelik perished in the first weeks of the war, during the defense of Kiev. My father regretted that he hadn't gone with us.
Genia and I managed to leave Krasnodar when the Germans were very close. We stayed at the railway station several days and nights until we could get on a train.
At the end of October 1941 we reached Chimkent in Kazakhstan. I was sent to work in one of the villages in South Kazakhstan. I worked there for a few weeks until I was summoned to the regional education department where they told me that I was to be replaced by a Kazakh teacher.
It was in 1937 when arrests of leading party and government officials began. [The interviewee is referring to the Great Terror.] [16] The authorities also arrested common people. One word or joke was enough to make accusations against innocent people.
We read in newspapers and heard on the radio about the arrests of political leaders. We, Komsomol members, had ultimate trust in the Soviet power, but we were shocked and didn't know what to believe anymore. We thought that it was true if newspapers wrote about such things, because we thought the Soviet power wouldn't lie to its people. Our university lecturers also suffered from repression. At some time we even had a visiting lecturer from Moscow to teach us, because there were no specialists left at the university. Yanolskiy, a history teacher, another history teacher, both Jews, a geography teacher and many others were arrested. They were accused of the distortion of the guidelines of the party and the government, betrayal of communist ideas and God knows what other sins. These were all talented teachers and honest and true party members. Some of them came back, others vanished in Stalin's camps.
We read in newspapers and heard on the radio about the arrests of political leaders. We, Komsomol members, had ultimate trust in the Soviet power, but we were shocked and didn't know what to believe anymore. We thought that it was true if newspapers wrote about such things, because we thought the Soviet power wouldn't lie to its people. Our university lecturers also suffered from repression. At some time we even had a visiting lecturer from Moscow to teach us, because there were no specialists left at the university. Yanolskiy, a history teacher, another history teacher, both Jews, a geography teacher and many others were arrested. They were accused of the distortion of the guidelines of the party and the government, betrayal of communist ideas and God knows what other sins. These were all talented teachers and honest and true party members. Some of them came back, others vanished in Stalin's camps.