So this trip was wonderful! Our relatives hosted us very well. We went on two free trips: one to the North of Israel and another to Jerusalem. We couldn’t go to the Dead Sea or to the Red Sea, because it was very hot over there, and I didn’t feel well. In Jerusalem we’ve been to that Museum, where they have this hall with stars, and the Alley of those, who saved Jews [Yad Vashem [35]]. And the Old Town, with all those archeological excavations, including some from the Roman period. We saw there a lot! I even wrote my observations down, and I have this Israeli diary somewhere at home. We walked a lot in Tel Aviv, went to supermarkets and shops, bought clothes and shoes. I still wear some shoes, which I bought in Israel. Those were the times, when we didn’t have an opportunity to buy clothes in the USSR. Here we had nothing.
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Displaying 34441 - 34470 of 50826 results
Rebecca Levina
In 1991 we found ourselves in America. I went to visit my cousins, whom I’d never seen before. I mean that we stayed at my husband’s relatives – his cousin hosted us very well, and I didn’t want to bother somebody else, so we stayed with him all the time. I saw quite a few of my own relatives, not all of them, since there are so many of them over there. I visited one of my cousins in New York, and the children of one of my fathers’ brothers live in California, we didn’t reach this American state. I don’t remember my cousin’s name. We met for the first and last time in our lives. She died later. My husband’s cousin Mark lives in America, he knows many languages and manages the work of translators in the United Nations, and we had a dinner at their canteen. And I was impressed by how much those Americans eat. I ordered some beef and French fries, and they put such a roast beef on my plate, that I was shocked. It was almost as big as a cow itself, I couldn’t eat it all.
In America we’ve been to Washington, some friend of Mark’s, who understood Russian, organized excursions for us. We went to the cemetery and saw Kennedy graves; we went to the Memorial of American soldiers, killed in Vietnam. We’ve been to the planetarium and experienced what it’s like to fly on fast speed planes and space shuttles. In New York we’ve been to the Museum of Fine Arts, walked to the Statue of Liberty, we’ve been to Manhattan, Harlem, the Bronx and Brighton Beach, of course. We even tried the elevators of the Empire State Building.
Also, we visited our relatives, went shopping. For example we bought a sweater for 5 dollars on sale. My husband loved this sweater and wore it for years. We paid for the airplane tickets only, and there our relatives gave us money and presents, they hosted and fed us. In Washington we noticed that there were quite many Russians around. We’ve also been to a casino. We played some machines and lost those few dollars, which we had. We even went to McDonalds for the first time in our entire life! I must say that real America differed very much from that country, which I had read about in books.
However, once I saw that old America, when some guy in a wide coat and big hat was speaking to the crowd in the very center of New York. But that was the only time. Generally, we saw happy smiling faces, unusual trees with big violet flowers, high speed roads, tunnels, and all this impressed us so much! We even bought gorgeous Russian food – sausages and sweets from my childhood – in Russian food stores. You can never find such splendid products in Russia. Even today. So we came back from America, feeling happy, rich and shocked.
In America we’ve been to Washington, some friend of Mark’s, who understood Russian, organized excursions for us. We went to the cemetery and saw Kennedy graves; we went to the Memorial of American soldiers, killed in Vietnam. We’ve been to the planetarium and experienced what it’s like to fly on fast speed planes and space shuttles. In New York we’ve been to the Museum of Fine Arts, walked to the Statue of Liberty, we’ve been to Manhattan, Harlem, the Bronx and Brighton Beach, of course. We even tried the elevators of the Empire State Building.
Also, we visited our relatives, went shopping. For example we bought a sweater for 5 dollars on sale. My husband loved this sweater and wore it for years. We paid for the airplane tickets only, and there our relatives gave us money and presents, they hosted and fed us. In Washington we noticed that there were quite many Russians around. We’ve also been to a casino. We played some machines and lost those few dollars, which we had. We even went to McDonalds for the first time in our entire life! I must say that real America differed very much from that country, which I had read about in books.
However, once I saw that old America, when some guy in a wide coat and big hat was speaking to the crowd in the very center of New York. But that was the only time. Generally, we saw happy smiling faces, unusual trees with big violet flowers, high speed roads, tunnels, and all this impressed us so much! We even bought gorgeous Russian food – sausages and sweets from my childhood – in Russian food stores. You can never find such splendid products in Russia. Even today. So we came back from America, feeling happy, rich and shocked.
We never celebrated Jewish holidays. And we didn’t go to the synagogue. We celebrated none of the religious holidays, of no religions. We celebrated 7th November, 9th May [36] the 1st May and New Year. And since perestroika started, we celebrate only New Year and Victory Day. And birthdays. We don’t celebrate revolutionary holidays any more.
We used to buy matzah at the synagogue. We made soup with klotskas [kind of dumpling]. When Elena was employed at the psychological service, they had a seminar of representatives of different nationalities. Everyone brought the meal of their national cuisine, she asked me to cook klotskas and tsimes [37]. Pesach klotskas made such an impression, such a furor! I knew some recipes of Jewish meals; I wrote them down and cooked. Of course, I didn’t bake the cake out of matzah wheat, it is necessary to pound the wheat, and it takes quite a long time.
It happened so that my friends were Jewish and my husband too. However it was their personality that mattered, not their nationality. I had some Russian friends too, but the best ones were Jewish. At school I had two Jewish friends, then Ella at university, and then I had another friend: half Russian, half Armenian. I had different friends at work, but the closest one was Eva Moiseevna, she was Jewish.
We get packages from Hesed [37], but we are old and aren’t able to take an active part in local community life. We never got any help from the Claims Conference. My husband got some support with paying for his hearing apparatus. I got some clothes, because I have a low pension. First I had a good pension – 120 rubles. And now, with all those changes, my pension is one of the lowest ones.
My grandmother was a housewife; she was a very determined, very particular, very serious woman, and Grandfather was a very soft, calm and clever person. And, as we usually say, with a good sense of humor. They spoke Yiddish. They didn’t wear any special Jewish clothes. Grandfather wore a usual suit, nothing Jewish. Grandmother dressed in a regular dress, but she always wore a kerchief, usually a black one.
My grandfather was a craftsman – a hat-maker. Bologoye was a railway station, there were plenty of railway workers, and Grandpa sewed railway uniform hats. He had his own business and a shop. Later, he built a large wooden house with four apartments. He lived there together with his wife, and after my mother got married, she lived there together with her husband and children too, and rented out the two other apartments. Later Grandfather sold the two apartments on the first floor and kept the two upper apartments for his family. We lived in one of them, and Grandfather and Grandmother lived in the other one. There was a Russian stove [5], electricity and kerosene in the house, but there was no water and no gas, of course. We didn’t have any kitchen garden either. We were definitely city dwellers.
When the Revolution started, Granddad closed his business and went to artel [6]. That’s why the officials didn’t take his house away. In those times the authorities used to take houses too.
. I remember only, that my parents were against the Soviet power. One of my cousins was a Komsomol member over there. But when they became a part of the USSR and they saw all those queues, and so on, she became a furious anti-Communist and anti-Soviet. She said that she didn’t want to wait for her turn to buy salt.
The Great Patriotic War [17] began on 22nd June 1941, and we, the Komsomol members, got an order to write a paper to raikom [regional committee of Communist Party] about our strong desire to work. We wrote that paper and in July they sent us to Seliyarovo station [railway station not far from Bologoye]. On the building of the guarding lines I was either a commissar or commander, I can’t remember exactly.
In this time an incendiary bomb hit our house, and it was burned completely. My mother was lucky to survive. By then, only my mother and one neighbor lived in our house – we never moved from that house, which my Grandfather built. I don’t know where other neighbors went, perhaps, they all left because of the war. So Mom invited some relatives and friends of Anna Matveevna, who were fleeing from Western Belarus to live there. Since we had two apartments, Mother rented a room out to them. That night the neighbor was at work, and my mother went to sleep at one of her friends’. She always brought a sack with her, with her documents, a golden watch, and silver spoons. And on that night the bomb hit our house, and everybody, who was inside, was killed.
We left for evacuation in October of 1941. Bologoye was bombed, and before I came back from building the guarding lines, Mother had to spend nights in some shed: there was no house anymore. Germans approached those places. At night we saw the glow of a fire, everything was burning, and we could end up under the Germans.
When we evacuated to Saratov, Leningrad University and Moscow GITIS [State Institute of Theater Arts] evacuated there too, so I had an opportunity to see all the famous actors there, even Khmelev [Nikolai Pavlovich Khemelev (1901-1945), famous Soviet actor, acted at Moscow Art Theater]. They were there for a short period of time, but performed something everyday. And I applied for GITIS, because I had copies of my documents and certificates. But I had to pass the special exam at GITIS, and I was frightened and didn’t even try to. And, probably, that was for the best, because they left soon, and I was such a home girl, my mommy’s girl! If I’d had to go, to leave my mother, that would have been a huge tragedy, I would have died. So I started to study in Saratov in 1942 because I applied for the Leningrad State University even before World War II started.
Father went to the army, just after World War II started. He was in the battalion of the aerodrome service, and that was the real front, and they bombed this battalion, and many pilots were killed. They weren’t in the rear, but moved together with the front and finished the war in Königsberg [today Kaliningrad, town on the coast of the Baltic Sea]. When in 1944 the Leningrad Blockade [18] was lifted, Father came to Saratov and took Mother with him, to the front, as a free hired labor. She sewed underwear for the pilots, and he sewed the uniforms.
In 1944 we had to leave for Leningrad together with the university, and Father had picked up Mother a bit earlier, and I lived on campus for a while, on one common bed with a friend of mine. She offered me to sleep with her. I had no place to live, and I had no opportunity to rent a room because I had no money.
My brother went to the army, just after his graduation from school at the age of 18. When World War II started, he was in the Crimea [today Ukraine] and retreated together with the Soviet army through Kerch [city on the Crimean peninsular, more than 600 kilometers from Kiev]. Almost nobody survived from their infantry unit. My mother and I were in evacuation, when he was sent to the school of political officials [this was the name of commissars at that time, in the Soviet army political officials were the officers, responsible for agitation and propaganda], and he came to Saratov. That was a horror! Cut greatcoat, cut shoes, he looked as if he’s just come from the trench. After he finished the school of political officials, he found himself in the artillery unit. He lost a foot in Germany, I don’t know where exactly. And that was very sad. The war was over in May 1945, and in January 1945 he stepped on a mine, and his foot was blown away. So he didn’t have his leg below the knee and for the rest of his life he wore an artificial leg.
Aunt Rosa together with her daughter was taken from the Leningrad blockade, they survived during the first blockade winter [winter of 1941-1942, the hardest winter during the war: about minus forty degrees Celsius in Leningrad, there was no food or heat], and then they lived in some village, but I don’t know exactly where it was.
One of my mother’s brothers, Samuel, was killed in the Leningrad Home Guard [peoples’ volunteer corps, many of its participants died during the very first months of the war], another one, Solomon, died while being in the army. Yakov died of tuberculosis during the blockade. Granny also died during the blockade in Leningrad.
One of my mother’s brothers, Samuel, was killed in the Leningrad Home Guard [peoples’ volunteer corps, many of its participants died during the very first months of the war], another one, Solomon, died while being in the army. Yakov died of tuberculosis during the blockade. Granny also died during the blockade in Leningrad.
Granny’s brother lived in Pushkin, and he was the director of the biggest local pharmacy. He was hanged by the Germans. Later, after World War II, when in the 1950s and 1960s we rented a dacha [20] in Pushkin, our landlord said that he had seen him on the gallows. My uncle had a beautiful daughter, we don’t know where she died; we know that the Germans took her to a brothel, but we can’t find any information about what happened to her later. His other daughter, Polina, found herself in Leningrad during the blockade and ran away; she is the only person of their family, who survived the war.
Father’s cousin, Lazar, fled from Belarus to the Soviet Union. He found himself in Pushkin, he worked there, and then got married. Lazar married a Russian girl, even though he was such a straight Zionist, a representative of the Jewish nation – I mean that he didn’t do anything special, he just talked about Jews and Jewish nationality – and he insisted that I had to marry only a Jew.
Aunt Rosa’s husband was killed on the front too, and the son of Grandmother’s sister, the one, who lived in Vishniy Volochek perished too. Apparently, quite a few of our family members died during the Great Patriotic War.
After 1939, when Western Belarus became part of the USSR [15], Father got an opportunity to go there and visit his relatives. And we all went together with him: my mother, brother, and I. It was just when my brother finished school, in 1940. Dyatlovo was an ordinary settlement. Maybe, my father’s relatives were involved in agriculture. We stayed at Father’s brother’s, Aron Eizerovich Alpert’s place; later, at the beginning of the 1940s he went to America. He had a good house, I don’t remember exactly how many rooms they had, but not one or two, certainly. I can’t recall the details, however in my memories it looks like quite a big house, it wasn’t old or broken. It seemed that it was built to stand for years. As I remember, they lived there a bit better, than we did here. We always had shortages, there was nothing: no clothes, no food products. I mean that in Bologoye you couldn’t buy fashionable clothes, or good fabrics, or delicious food.
My grandfather had reasonably good relations with his neighbors. His pals were mainly Jews, but people came to order a hat, not paying attention to his nationality. Mainly, he worked for Russians, because Bologoye was a Russian town, there were not so many Jews.
I don’t think that Grandfather liked the Revolution, but he was a very careful person, so he understood quickly that it didn’t make any sense to make fun of the Soviet power. He worked very well for this artel, he was valued at work, and everything was all right for him.
I know that they celebrated Jewish holidays; we always had Pesach seder together. But I can’t say for sure if Grandfather prayed or read the Torah. I wasn’t interested in religion, so I didn’t pay attention to this aspect of their life.
There were five or ten Jewish families among our pals and neighbors. Maybe, there were about 100 Jews in Bologoye, however I can’t even guess what the population of the town was. There were no synagogues or prayer houses. Men gathered to pray together. I don’t think they met very often, perhaps once a week, perhaps only on holidays. They never gathered in our house, Father had to go to some other Jews. But they certainly didn’t rent any special place for those meetings; they just went to someone’s house. I remember the Alperovich family, the family of Bertha Finkelshtein – they came from Ukraine, and Bertha studied in our class – but those families didn’t visit the praying ceremonies. There was no mikveh in town, and there were no Jewish schools either. There was no ghetto; Jews lived everywhere, but mainly in the center, near the station.
Before the Revolution, Jews in Bologoye had to be craftsmen or merchants. And only afterwards all other professions appeared. Mark Evseich Alpert was a schoolteacher. Alpert, after all, is a rare family name. And in Bologoye somehow there happened to be two Alperts, and they weren’t relatives, or from the same settlement.
Before the Revolution, Jews in Bologoye had to be craftsmen or merchants. And only afterwards all other professions appeared. Mark Evseich Alpert was a schoolteacher. Alpert, after all, is a rare family name. And in Bologoye somehow there happened to be two Alperts, and they weren’t relatives, or from the same settlement.
My mom raised all of Grandmother’s children, as she was the oldest one and always helped her mother. She was a babysitter both for her brothers and sisters. That’s why she didn’t get any education. She studied at the elementary school for four years, and then her father said, ‘You can write and read, that’s enough.’ On the contrary, her sisters finished the gymnasium [high school].
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
Father didn’t have any secular education, however he had a Jewish one, and he had gotten that one in Dyatlovo.
When World War I started he was mobilized and served in the Russian Army. It seems to me, he was an ordinary soldier in the infantry. They reached Austria and somewhere in Austria he was taken prisoner. It’s good that it wasn’t Germany because in Austria they were a bit more liberal to Jews. Later on, somehow he found himself in Italy, and some Italian woman fell in love with him. He told her, ‘I’m a Jew!’, and she replied, ‘That’s okay.’ However, he decided to come back, and after the War, in 1918, he happened to be in Russia, in Bologoye.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
In 1921 my parents got married, and in 1922 my brother was born. I don’t know exactly, but I think they had some kind of a Jewish wedding. Certainly not the big traditional event, but, probably, something like a chuppah.