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Displaying 31891 - 31920 of 50826 results
Tibor Gohman
At Chanukkah my mother lit another candle in a chanukkiyah every day. At Rosh Hashanah we always had honey and apples on the table. I don’t think we did it because my parents had a need in observation of traditions. Knowing my grandmother I would rather think that my mother observed rules on the outside since if grandmother had come unexpectedly on a holiday and saw that something wasn’t done for a holidays there would have been a lot of yelling and lecturing… My grandmother’s daughters and daughters-in-law did the same. They observed rules on the outside and grandmother didn’t look into details.
Yom Kippur was the only Jewish holiday that our family celebrated according to all rules. There was a kapores ritual before the holiday. My mother bought a white hen for herself and white roosters for my father and her sons. The hen was to be slowly turned around the head and we had to say: ‘May you be my atonement’. I don’t know what happened to these roosters afterward. Probably we just ate them. Before Yom Kippur my mother cooked a very sufficient dinner. It was allowed to eat before the first star appeared in the sky and then a 24-hour fast began. [Editor’s note: actually it is a 25 hours fast.] We, children, didn’t fast, but our parents strictly observed the fast. I remember my grandfather visiting us at home before Yom Kippur saying strictly: ‘You must be at the synagogue tomorrow!’ My parents spent a whole day at the synagogue and returned home after the first stars appeared in the sky. Then the fast was over and we could eat together with parents.
When I went to the first form, my father sent me to cheder. I studied there two weeks and decided it was enough for me. Probably this was my first personal decision in my life. My mother insisted that I went back to cheder, but my father said that if I didn’t want to study there it was going to be a waste of time anyway. I remember that he said to my mother: ‘He can live his life without cheder!’ Of course, my grandmother was very angry about it. She blamed my parents that they raised a goy of a boy, but then things smoothed down and I didn’t go to cheder again.
I went to a Czech school at the age of 6. My older brother Miklos also went to this school. There were few Jewish children in my class and teachers and other schoolchildren had a good attitude toward them. There was no anti-Semitism during the Czech rule and they supported Jews in every way. I was doing well at school, although I wasn’t an industrious pupil. I preferred playing with my friends outside rather than sitting at home with my textbooks. I had Jewish and non-Jewish friends. There was no segregation among us, we were just friends. I sang in our school choir and we sang on all school holidays. I finished three forms in the Czech school.
I went to the 4th form in a Hungarian school. We didn’ face any anti-Semitism for about a year after annexation of Subcarpathia to Hungary. In 1939 they began to introduce anti-Jewish laws [8]. There was anti-Semitism on a state level. One of the first laws issued was a ban to buy goods in Jewish stores. Storeowners were ordered to reassign their ownership to non-Jews, but they could stay and work there. Then they began to expropriate other property from Jews: factories and shops. If Jewish owners were not quick enough to reassign their property the state expropriated it without compensation. Jews were not allowed to study in higher educational institutions and were not recruited to the army, but they served in forced labors.
My brother Miklos couldn’t afford to continue his studies after finishing school. The family of five of us could hardly manage on my father’s salary. In 1941 Hungarians introduced food cards. Jews received rationed food by these cards. Food was very expensive at markets. Miklos became an apprentice with a tailor. I finished school in 1942 and had to go to work. I became an apprentice of a joiner. I had a one-year training and in 1943 I began to work as a joiner in a shop.
In 1943 Jews were ordered to have yellow stars on their clothes, on the chest and on the back. It was not allowed to be outside without stars. Any Hungarian soldier could kill a Jew even without taking them to the commandant’s office.
In spring 1944 a ghetto was established in Mukachevo. Yevreyskatya and Danko Streets were fenced with barbed wire and they ordered Jews to move therein. It was allowed to take some food and few clothes for luggage. There were many people in the ghetto. There was at least one family or more living in one room. Then it turned out that this ghetto was too small for all Jews of Mukachevo. Then they made another ghetto near that one. It wasn’t allowed to leave the ghetto or even to go from one ghetto to another, but it was allowed to move within one ghetto, go from one house to another. We were in the ghetto with my father’s parents, his sisters Frieda and Fannie, my mother’s brother Yakov and sister Frieda. Later I got to know that Hungarians did not take Jews who had awards of World War I to ghettos or concentration camps. But this was in Hungary and in Subcarpathia they moved all Jews to ghettos. [Editor’s note: This concession of the 1st and 2nd Jewish law was changed in 1941, when nobody was an exception.] My father’s sisters Regi and her family and Eszter were in another ghetto.
We stayed in the ghetto few weeks. Then near the gate to the ghetto they placed an order for inmates of the ghetto to pack some food and clothes for moving to another place. We were taken to Uzhhorod [40 km from Mukachevo, 680 km from Kiev] to a brick factory. Jews from Uzhhorod and the rest of Subcarpathia were taken there. Jews from a village or a town were grouped in one area. We lived in an open air. There were brick drying chambers, but it was impossible to stay inside. They were ruined and damp and there were broken bricks on the ground and there was no ventilation. There were other facilities with 3 walls left and no roof. Families tried to find space between those partition facilities. They were no protection from the cold or drizzling rain. Perhaps, all they gave was a relative feeling of protection. There was no food given in the ghetto. We ate what we had with us, but we ran out of food promptly. Occasionally people came from Uzhhorod and threw some food behind the walls. Some came to support their friends or acquaintances, but some of them were angry about this treatment of Jews and wanted to help unknown Jews in ghetto. Just outsiders were angry about this maltreatment of Jews and wanted to support the inmates. The inmates of the ghetto were sent to work. Few crews of the inmates of the ghetto, with Hungarian gendarme supervisors made the rounds of Jewish houses sorting out clothing, furniture, utilities, pictures, etc., and hauled these to a storage facility. Nobody from our family was taken to do this work.
We stayed about 10 days in the ghetto in Uzhhorod. There was a railroad spur near the brick factory used for shipment of bricks and supplied when the factory was in operation. In April 1944 railcars for cattle transportation arrived at this spur. We were taken to these railcars together, a group of us as we were in the ghetto: 5 of us, my father’s parents, his sisters Frieda and Fannie, my mother’s brother Yakov and sister Frieda. There was no room to lie down, people could hardly find space to sit on the floor. There was a hole made in the center for a sewer. There was no way of going to the toilet in hiding and it had to be done before the eyes of others. We were not given water or food. I don’t remember how long the trip lasted, but it seemed eternity to me. We knew that we were taken to a concentration camp: there were rumors about concentration camps in Mukachevo, but nobody knew those were extermination camps. We were sure those were forced labor camps, something like work battalions.
We arrived at Auschwitz early in the morning. There were German soldiers standing near each railcar. They had machine guns. There were also people in white robes, probably, doctors. People were sorted: old men separately, women with children, young people and middle aged ones – separately. I was almost 16 and I was strong and big. They separated me and my brother Miklos from our parents. My parents and younger brother were taken to a group guarded by Germans with machine guns. We were in Auschwitz until night and then we were ordered to border a train and taken to Katovice, a work camp of Auschwitz. My brother was taken to another camp. I didn’t know what happened to my dear ones. I didn’t know that my parents and my younger brother Adalbert, my father’s parents, my mother’s brother Yakov and my mother’s sister, whose name I don’t remember with her husband and children and my father’s sisters Frieda and Fannie were sent to a gas chamber when our group was waiting for departure from Auschwitz.. My father’s sisters Regi and her husband and the children and Eszter and her children, who were in another ghetto, also perished in a gas chamber. Only my mother’s sister Frieda survived in the concentration camp. She was very pretty and they probably felt sorry for her and didn’t send her to a gas chamber. She worked somewhere there, but her children perished.
We arrived at Auschwitz early in the morning. There were German soldiers standing near each railcar. They had machine guns. There were also people in white robes, probably, doctors. People were sorted: old men separately, women with children, young people and middle aged ones – separately. I was almost 16 and I was strong and big. They separated me and my brother Miklos from our parents. My parents and younger brother were taken to a group guarded by Germans with machine guns. We were in Auschwitz until night and then we were ordered to border a train and taken to Katovice, a work camp of Auschwitz. My brother was taken to another camp. I didn’t know what happened to my dear ones. I didn’t know that my parents and my younger brother Adalbert, my father’s parents, my mother’s brother Yakov and my mother’s sister, whose name I don’t remember with her husband and children and my father’s sisters Frieda and Fannie were sent to a gas chamber when our group was waiting for departure from Auschwitz.. My father’s sisters Regi and her husband and the children and Eszter and her children, who were in another ghetto, also perished in a gas chamber. Only my mother’s sister Frieda survived in the concentration camp. She was very pretty and they probably felt sorry for her and didn’t send her to a gas chamber. She worked somewhere there, but her children perished.
In Katovice we were accommodated in very big plank barracks. There were narrow two-tier plank beds. It’s hard to say how many inmates were in barracks. I think there were about 500 inmates in one. The majority of inmates were Jews, but there were also Polish, Czechs, Slovaks, Austrians and people from other countries. I talked with Hungarians and Czechs knowing both languages. There was a senior inmate in each barrack. Management of the camp knew those headmen. German soldiers with machine guns and trained dogs guarded the camp. Since it was a work camp Germans gave us food to be able to work. We had three meals per day: in the morning we had a cup of surrogate coffee with bread, then we had lunch at work site delivered from the camp. In the evening we had some boiled cereal and a little soup. Of course, there were bed sheets or pillows, but each of us had a blanket. Every morning after breakfast we marched to work sites. Katovice like other Polish towns was ruined. Almost a whole town was in ruins. We were to remove this debris. We piled bricks and debris to be loaded on trucks hauling it out. So we were cleaning up the town, street after street. We were given spades, picks and crowbars in the camp. After work we carried our tools back to the camp. We worked without days off and didn’t know the count of days or months.
In January 1945 Soviet and American troops began to advance. The front line was approaching Auschwitz. We were formed in columns and marched to Mauthausen under convoy having weapons. We were not given any food or water on the way. About 5 thousand people left Katovice, but less than a thousand reached Mauthausen. Many died of hunger. The convoy was shooting those who were too weak to go. They shot them in the head and pushed corpses aside the road. There was a crew walking behind us. They buried the corpses, but later they stopped doing this. It was already cold. It was January. We were in our camp robes, and our convoy allowed us to wrap our blankets around our shoulders. We slept on the ground or sometimes they took us to abandoned stables or sheds. People happened to freeze to death at night.
We didn’t work in Mauthausen. Occasionally guards chose few inmates to clean up the territory, but we didn’t go to work systematically. We were provided one meal per day: it was some kind of soup with half-rotten beetroots. There was no bread. We spent almost all time lying on our plank beds. There was no heating in barracks. There were many barracks. There were English prisoners-of-war in one barrack. They were treated a little better. Once per month they were allowed to receive food parcels and they got better meals than we were. In our barracks inmates died of diseases and emaciation every day. We understood that the front line was coming nearer and that the end of war was close. There were rumors in the camp that Germans were going to exterminate all inmates before leaving the camp. We didn’t consider escape. There were guards on towers who shot inmates even when they came out of their barracks at a wrong time. There were patrol dogs running across the camp. They jumped on inmates, bringing them down and tore them to pieces. We were too weak to walk away and we understood it well. We were lying on plank beds shivering from cold. We were weak and knew that death was unavoidable; one way or another we were going to die either from hunger or the guards would kill us. It lasted until 8 May 1945. On this day US troops entered the camp. This was our liberation day.
We didn’t work in Mauthausen. Occasionally guards chose few inmates to clean up the territory, but we didn’t go to work systematically. We were provided one meal per day: it was some kind of soup with half-rotten beetroots. There was no bread. We spent almost all time lying on our plank beds. There was no heating in barracks. There were many barracks. There were English prisoners-of-war in one barrack. They were treated a little better. Once per month they were allowed to receive food parcels and they got better meals than we were. In our barracks inmates died of diseases and emaciation every day. We understood that the front line was coming nearer and that the end of war was close. There were rumors in the camp that Germans were going to exterminate all inmates before leaving the camp. We didn’t consider escape. There were guards on towers who shot inmates even when they came out of their barracks at a wrong time. There were patrol dogs running across the camp. They jumped on inmates, bringing them down and tore them to pieces. We were too weak to walk away and we understood it well. We were lying on plank beds shivering from cold. We were weak and knew that death was unavoidable; one way or another we were going to die either from hunger or the guards would kill us. It lasted until 8 May 1945. On this day US troops entered the camp. This was our liberation day.
We arrived at Mukachevo in July 1945. Our house was locked and the doors were sealed since we were taken to the ghetto. Any belongings were gone. Probably, they took away things from abandoned Jewish houses in Mukachevo like they did in Uzhhorod. Only what seemed to have no value to gendarmes remained in the house. Our neighbors sympathized with us and at the beginning tried to help us as much as they could. We lived in our house.
When we returned Miklos went to work as a tailor in a fashion shop. People wanted to dress nicely. The war was over and it seemed that life was beginning anew. It was hard to buy something in shops: there was one thing about the Soviet regime that we had never known before regardless the regimes: empty shops. Therefore, having a tailor make clothes was the only opportunity. Miklos had many orders and earned well. I went to work as a joiner in a shop. We received Soviet passports and became citizens of the USSR. From Tibor I had the name of Tibor written in my passport and Miklos became Nikolay.
Soviet authorities began struggle against religion [9] in Subcarpathia. They were closing all religious temples. They treated believers almost like criminals. The USSR didn’t appreciate people having relatives abroad and contacts with them [10]. We found it strange, but for newcomers from the USSR it was absolutely natural. My brother and I had somewhat skeptical attitude to this world, but we looked at it with interest. We understood that our past life was over and we had to adjust to life in the USSR.
All citizens of the USSR were subject to military service after turning 18 years of age. A military registry office acknowledged that Miklos was unfit for military service, while I was registered for future service. In autumn 1948 they sent me a notification to make my appearance at the registry office where they announced that I was recruited to the Soviet army. All recruits were taken to Byelorussia where they were forming a military unit and from there we moved to Khabarovsk in the Far East, in 7000 km from home. In Khabarovsk I had some training and then was assigned to the Pacific Ocean Navy. It was an electric engineering battalion dealing in installation of electric equipment on aerodromes. Our battalion was sent to Uglovaya station in 30 km from Vladivostok. Although I was the only person in my battalion who was not a Komsomol [11] member they appointed me chief of a logistics platoon. I was in command! A year later I was promoted to the rank of sergeant. We lived in barracks. I was the only Jew in my battalion, but I never faced any anti-Semitism at that period. I had friends of many nationalities, but none of them gave much thought to my Jewish identity. My management also treated me well.
I met my wife to be when I was in the army. Valentina Novikova studied in the Electric Engineering Technical School in Vladivostok. I occasionally took a leave and went to town with my fellow comrades. We went for walks or to dancing events. Once we went to dance in Valentina’s school where I met her. We spent a whole evening together talking and dancing and decided to meet again on my next leave. Valentina was born in Leningrad 1928. Her mother died at childbirth. Valentina’s father was a professional military and moved from one place to another, so he didn’t have an opportunity to raise his daughter. He left Valentina with her grandmother in Novosibirsk. She raised Valentina. Her father perished at the front. Valentina was Russian, but nationality never mattered to me. It didn’t matter to her that I was a Jew. That we loved each other was important to us. We were both orphans and cared about our future family and children. I married Valentina in 1953, when I served in the army. We didn’t have money and we couldn’t afford a wedding party. We registered our marriage in a registry office and in the evening I received a 3-day leave that we spent together at Valentina’s home and then I returned to my military unit.
I remember that I was traveling by train to visit my brother on 5 March 1953. The train stopped at the Baikal station. The radio announced that Stalin died and then Beriya [12] said a speech. All passengers were crying and I couldn’t hold back my tears either. Of course, I wasn’t in the state of panic like many Soviet people who didn’t understand their life without Stalin. I understood that life was going on and this was not the end of the world, but his death was also a grief for me. Uncertainty was the most worrying thing: who was to replace Stalin and what was going to happen to us. I didn’t believe in changes for better and as for the bad, there are no limits to it.
Later, after Khrushchev [13] spoke at the 20th Congress [14], I got rid of my illusions about Stalin. Of course, I believed Khrushchev instantly. I had heard before from my fellow comrades that people had been arrested without any grounds for a word spoken incautiously by someone else’s report. When I served in the army there was a KGB [15] officer in every unit. Our chief of this special department was captain Baranov. Everybody was afraid of him. There was a car mechanic from Mukachevo in our unit. His surname was Dashko. On 5 March, when Stalin died, Dashko was fixing a car lying under it. Captain Baranov came near and asked what he was doing. Dashko replied that he had to fix a car. ‘Haven’t you heard that Stalin died?’ Dashko replied that he was sorry, of course, but what could one do, his time had come… For just this phrase he was sentenced to 25 years in camps. He was released in 1956 after the 20th Party Congress, but he had spent few years in camps, anyway. This was a man I knew in person. I did suspect that there was something wrong about Stalin’s regime. Then another incident proved my doubts was about Beriya. At the time, when Stalin was in power, Beriya was the second man in the state, but after Stalin’s death he all of a sudden became an enemy of the people, a spy and was executed on December 23, 1953. I gradually came to understanding that a party was associated with constant lies, but this understanding didn’t evolve at once.
In 1954 I demobilized from the army. My wife finished her college and moved to her grandmother in Novosibirsk. I arrived there after demobilization. When I arrived, all I had included kersey boots, my military shirt and overcoat. My wife and I could only rely on ourselves. There was to be no help from somebody else. I went to work as a car mechanic at an equipment yard and later I became a driver there. I worked as a driver for the rest of my life. At first we rented a room and then I received a plot of land from my work to build a house. We made a temporary hut and continued construction of a house. 2 years later our house was ready. It was a good brick house with 4 rooms and a kitchen. I also installed water and gas piping. We moved in with Valentina and her grandmother. Our children also grew up in this house.
During our life in Novosibirsk I never faced anti-Semitism, or heard about anti-Semitic attitudes in Novosibirsk. My children went to school and nobody asked them about their nationality.
I didn’t join Komsomol in the army, though they offered me. When I went to work at the equipment yard they insisted that I joined the Party. This was the eastern part of the USSR that became Soviet in 1917. Generations of people who grew up during the Soviet period believed in communism and sincerely thought that the party was ‘the leading and guiding force’, as they said in newspaper articles. I also partially fell under their influence. We believed in the communism that Khrushchev promised. Communist ideas are good, only they disguised their wrong deeds in them.
I joined the party in Novosibirsk in 1959. There were three of us joining the party: I, a young driver and chief mechanic of the equipment yard; he was 45 years old. We were invited to the Party town committee for a discussion with old communists. Each of us was invited to an office where they asked us questions. An old general asked most questions. They asked me whether I learned the statute and few simple questions. Then they asked the young driver and chief mechanic was the last one to be interrogated. The general asked him: why have you ripened so late for joining the party? And he replied jokingly: they watered me poorly and that was why it came so late. We burst into laughter, but the old Bolsheviks didn’t like this answer at all. However, all three of us were admitted. So I became a communist. I understood that this was a reliable way for me to get a promotion. Any doors opened to members of the party. Yes, it was necessary to work honestly and comply with plans. Communists were the first ones to be questioned when there was a delay. And I worked honestly and well, but not because this was what the party demanded, but because I had to support my family. I knew that I had to find a well-paid job by all means. So I was promoted being a communist: I was secretary of a party organization and chairman of a shop committee. In a short period I lost my trust in the party and in communism. I wasn’t a communist in my heart.
I joined the party in Novosibirsk in 1959. There were three of us joining the party: I, a young driver and chief mechanic of the equipment yard; he was 45 years old. We were invited to the Party town committee for a discussion with old communists. Each of us was invited to an office where they asked us questions. An old general asked most questions. They asked me whether I learned the statute and few simple questions. Then they asked the young driver and chief mechanic was the last one to be interrogated. The general asked him: why have you ripened so late for joining the party? And he replied jokingly: they watered me poorly and that was why it came so late. We burst into laughter, but the old Bolsheviks didn’t like this answer at all. However, all three of us were admitted. So I became a communist. I understood that this was a reliable way for me to get a promotion. Any doors opened to members of the party. Yes, it was necessary to work honestly and comply with plans. Communists were the first ones to be questioned when there was a delay. And I worked honestly and well, but not because this was what the party demanded, but because I had to support my family. I knew that I had to find a well-paid job by all means. So I was promoted being a communist: I was secretary of a party organization and chairman of a shop committee. In a short period I lost my trust in the party and in communism. I wasn’t a communist in my heart.
I didn’t quite notice the invasion of Soviet troops to Hungary [in 1956] [16]; we lived in Novosibirsk then and there was hardly anything heard about it there.
As for Czechoslovakian events [which was called Prague Spring] [17], I was taking part in them. I was recruited to the army again working in a militarized equipment unit. In case of combat action we were recruited automatically. We were sent to Czechoslovakia. I was commander of the equipment unit of a platoon. We spent there 3 months. Seeing it all with our own eyes we couldn’t believe the version of Soviet propaganda that Soviet troops invaded the country at the request of residents of Czechoslovakia since Germans were supposedly going to occupy Czechoslovakia and had their armies near the border. We were told that we were going to rescue Czechoslovakia from aggression, while actually Soviet armies invaded the country since the Czechs wanted to pull out of socialism and didn’t want to obey to the USSR demands. Of course, the USSR couldn’t allow a single country to ‘leave the socialist camp’, or other countries would be on the run, too. We talked with Slovaks and understood the situation promptly. They were yelling seeing us: ‘Ivan, go home!’ Everybody understood that we hadn’t come there at their request: this was not the way to greet liberators. We were not rescuing them, but killing… I understood this clearly from the very beginning.
Of course, we didn’t celebrate Jewish holidays at home. We celebrated Soviet holidays: 1 May, 7 November [October Revolution Day] [18], Victory Day [May 9] [19], 23rd February, the Soviet army Day [20] and New Year. For my wife and children those were the holidays they were used to.
We only spoke Russian at home. Valentina didn’t know Hungarian. None of my acquaintances spoke Hungarian either.
One month later, in September 1965, my wife and I sold our house in Novosibirsk and the four of us moved to Uzhhorod. We bought a house near my brother’s place in Uzhhorod. Our children went to school and I went to work as a driver in an equipment yard. My wife went to work as an assembly worker at a tool manufacturing plant. Valentina was having a hard time in Uzhhorod. She was used to living in a big city: there were 1.5 million resident in Novosibirsk at that time, and Uzhhorod seemed like a big village after Novosibirsk. Valentina cried at nights and wanted to go back there. Then she made friends and work and things became easier. Then she was assigned to the position of military electronic equipment testing specialist where she worked until retirement.
After moving to Uzhhorod my family took up skiing. Uzhhorod is surrounded with picturesque mountains and there are many slopes fro skiing. We liked going hiking in the mountains when I was free on weekends. In winter we skied and in spring and summer we just walked on the picturesque outskirts. We also liked to spend vacation in a nice spot in Subcarpathia.
By the way, after we moved to Uzhhorod I faced anti-Semitism for the first time in my life. My daughter who was in the 5th grade at school was called zhydovka [kike]. She asked us what this word meant. This was the first time she heard this word and we had to explain about Jews. However, there were no more incidents.