They spoke Yiddish in our family. Apparently, Father didn’t know Russian very well. Mother knew Russian, but not too well either. How come I spoke good Russian, I don’t know. I understood Yiddish, but I never spoke it. My mother tongue is Russian, and their mother tongue was Yiddish. It seems to me that my father even knew some ancient Hebrew.
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Rebecca Levina
My father didn’t join the artel; he was an independent dressmaker all his life. He worked very much: from early morning till night, it was necessary to feed the family. He worked at home and listened to the radio all day long: both music and literature programs. My mother never worked, she was a housewife. She didn’t work because she didn’t have any education. They wanted her to become a milliner, but she refused, saying that crafts and such professions weren’t interesting for her.
Mother read a lot: both newspapers and fiction. And Father read only the Talmud. Father never made us do the same, or explained why he did so. He just stayed alone and read the book and prayed. Mother probably didn’t go to the library, but we had books at home. She read very much, and even just before she died, when she had both glaucoma and cataract, she was blind on one eye, she had very strong glasses, but she always sat in the evening, lit the lamp and read a little. We had some books at home, when I was a child. I think we had mainly Russian classics.
My parents communicated mainly with Jewish families: families, who lived in the neighborhood, clients, who ordered the clothes. They mainly talked to each other about their everyday life, about prices and children, and so on. You know what people usually talk about, if they live not far from each other and have some free time. They discuss school and teachers, food and clothes, local news. They had relations with Russians too, but there wasn’t any special friendship.
They started school at the age of eight in those times. I studied in the eleventh railways’ school [10]. That was a Russian school; there were no Jewish schools in Bologoye. I liked to study, and studied well.
I liked to dance very much. We had dancing lessons at school, in the eighth grade. In summer girls went for dances in the park. Also we organized school parties at someone’s house. There were girls who lived in large apartments, their parents let them invite guests, and we danced and celebrated the holidays.
I’ve been to pioneers’ camps twice or three times, alone, without my brother. I liked it there. Mainly we played sports games there and participated in sports competitions, we swam, jumped and ran. In the evenings we sang songs, made a fire and told stories. We organized evenings of amateur talent activities too. And later I was an active Komsomol member [12].
In Bologoye we always went to demonstrations. The demonstrations were organized on the days of important Soviet holidays, like 1st May or the Day of the October Revolution [13]. The May demonstration was especially pleasant because usually the spring came, the weather was nice, it was sunny, and everyone was cheerful. We sang pioneer and revolutionary songs, carried flags and were very happy. Also we participated in the sports parade: putting on such funny shorts, and T-shirts, and built various pyramids. Those were good holidays.
We spent vacations in Bologoye, we had beautiful lakes, and Putyatin garden, we swam there – I started to swim on my own – and we took boat trips, especially in high school, we went to some islands and had picnics over there. It was fun to live in Bologoye.
I have to say that almost all my school friends were Jewish: Bertha Finkelshtein, Irina Kalach, and Polina, I can’t recall her family name. We all studied at one school, but in different classes. Of course, sometimes children at school or in the street made fun of me. But, it is necessary to note that there was almost no everyday anti-Semitism. They treated me well both at school and at the university.
My grandfather and grandmother were religious. However, Granny never wore the sheitl, and Grandfather never wore a kippah. My father was a religious Jew too. He prayed: they collected a group of ten people – minyan – and prayed together.
At home, in our family we celebrated some religious holidays, on Pesach we baked matzah ourselves. They came to us, everyone, who could, because it was necessary to do many things at once: to make the pastry, then to mix it. With the special iron bar we made the flat cakes thin and plain: they made holes inside with some instrument with a small wheel. There were special ‘pounders’ where they pounded wheat and made matzah out of it. Everything was right as in the laws, they didn’t eat any bread. I mean, the children ate it and the parents didn’t.
We celebrated all holidays, according to the tradition. There was everything: wine, gefilte fish, and my mother baked the very tasty and delicious cake out of matzah wheat, is seems to me, it was called khremzlakh. Also they baked such honey cookies, called teyglakh. Certainly not on Pesach, but at other times. Of course, we had the seder dinner, we never invited guests, and we celebrated it, all six of us: Mother, Father, Grandmother, Grandfather, Izaya and I. Mostly my parents organized it, but sometimes our grandparents did it too. Father prayed, and then we ate gefilte fish, and drank red wine, and Pesach broth. We never missed school, because of Jewish holidays, school was much more important.
Father worked at home, he had no holidays or vacations, but each Saturday he relaxed. I remember that he always prayed on this day, perhaps, he studied religious books too. And Grandfather, of course, observed Jewish traditions too.
We celebrated all Jewish holidays at home, I remember them well, for example, the very joyful 'shimhaster' [Simchat Torah]. Mother always kept the Fast [on Yom Kippur] and celebrated the Jewish New Year [Rosh Hashanah]. I don’t remember my father fasting; he wasn’t a very healthy person, so… We, the children, never fasted, not a minute! And Mother fasted both during Yom Kippur and those days, which she ‘promised’ to God.
While I was very little, Grandfather and Dad ate kosher. They bought a live chicken, and the shochet slaughtered it – we had a shochet in town even after the Revolution. Mother plucked it herself, and they explained to us, the children, why and how the shochet had to cut chicken. They said that he cut in such a way that the chicken died the same moment. They told us something about traditions. They didn’t make us read the Torah, we didn’t ever pray, but our father prayed, he wore tallit and something on the head, I don’t know what that was.
I recall how Hitler came to power, the division of Poland. All that was known, but now I don’t remember my reaction to those events and episodes of history. When Hitler came to power in 1933, we discussed that fact at home.
They always kept speaking about politics at home. They hated Joseph Vissarionovich [Stalin]. At home they called him only ‘shuster,’ shoemaker, because Stalin’s father was a shoemaker. And if they said ‘shuster,’ everyone understood whom they meant. Of course, my parents had strong anti-Soviet sentiments.
Our parents trusted us a lot, from the very young age we guessed what one could discuss in public places and what one couldn’t. Still, we were ardent Komsomol members and big fans of the Soviet State system. Our parents, for some reason, couldn’t or didn’t want to raise us as their followers. And they kept talking in an anti-Soviet manner, but we argued with them, we told Mother, ‘You forgot how they wanted you to go away from Bologoye,’ and she answered, ‘Nothing special, we gave him [the policeman] some money, and I lived on.
Anatoly Lifshits
He worked very successfully, but he also drank the cup of woe: in 1937 he was arrested and sent to camps in Vorkuta [a city in the far north of Russia]. But he was lucky: by that time his machines stopped working and nobody could understand the reason. They retrieved David (though by that time he was already half-dead) from Vorkuta. He managed to understand reasons of malfunctions and explained how to deal with them. They did not send him back to the camp, and it saved his life.
In 1937 during the Great Terror [3] he was arrested and perished in Stalin’s camps. Of course we know no details about his death.
He worked as a chief mechanical engineer at the Chelyabinsk Tractor Factory.
I can tell nothing for a fact about the level of religiosity of my grandparents. I guess religion did not have a significant place in their life. My grandmother used to live with us for a long time, and I never saw her praying. She never attended the synagogue.
I was born in October 1918 in Ufa in the midst of the Civil War [1]. The family of my maternal grandfather escaped from the Bolsheviks (I understood it later) in the wake of the retreating Kolchak army [2].
In 1890s in Ufa my maternal grandfather Joseph Gutman founded an iron workshop which was later turned into rather large iron foundry. The workshop produced even fire machines (!). It is interesting that in 1960s I travelled along the Volga River and in Volgograd I saw covers of manholes with inscription GUTMAN.
Besides our studies we had to participate in different meetings, where we were obliged to blame enemies of people [12] (it had to be a group action). Most often we had to blame participants of different antigovernment groups, who had already been arrested and condemned. Those people lived in Moscow, and we were in Kiev, but it made no difference. It was not an easy way for the College communist leaders to deal with students: they asked improper questions, refused to vote for condemning resolutions. I cannot tell that I acted up to my principles: I was a conformist (sat still, solving integrals and raising my hand when demanded). Probably, that was the way I survived. But it was impossible to survive another way.
I was advised to study at the Faculty of Chemical Mechanical Engineering. I have studied there a year. That year did not impress me at all. I was an excellent student in mathematics, because I was prepared very well. But I did not like the way they taught us physics. And technical drawing was the most difficult subject for me. It was a real torture. I remember that one day a teacher made 93 remarks about my drawing.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
Again my father left Kiev for Gorky [now Nizhniy Novgorod] region to work at a factory producing windshields. I guess departure of my father had one more reason: he had a foreboding about a possible arrest. In that case simple change of residence could help.
So, it was necessary to choose a college. At that time I knew nothing about pure science, because I was brought up in the family of engineers. If I knew, I would have entered Mathematical Faculty of the University and would have been engaged in my favorite mathematics. But at that time I decided between the 2 variants: a school teacher or an engineer. I chose engineering career and entered the Kiev Polytechnic College.
I remember that after Khrushchev denounced Stalin's methods [11] and rehabilitated many prisoners (unfortunately most of them posthumously) Mom told a joke ‘Khrushchev is walking around a cemetery, bowing low to each tomb and asking ARE YOU REHABILITATED?’ So, we were taught to hold our tongues, but at the same time parents used to say that we should stand up for justice. I learned that lesson very well, and later I’ll tell you how I suffered over it. By the way, I do not believe people who say that they learned about Stalin repressions only after Khrushchev’s speech. Everyone knew, but was afraid: it was too terrible to know.