We must have been lucky that the border was closed, because during the first days of WW2 Latvia was occupied by Germans and Jews were exterminated. All our close relatives were killed by Germans: mother’s brother Ehiel, his wife and 2 children, widow of Abo-Simon with two kids and other relatives whom I do not remember.
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Rahil Shabad
We stayed in Vitebsk. Father rented a poky room with the wooden floor and ramshackle walls. We lived there in the period of 1921-1926. We slept on the baskets with the clothes of my father’s sister Neha.
There were 8 people in the family and father was the only one who worked. There was a raging unemployment in our country at that time. Father was on odd jobs. The family was indigent. In 1924 father went to Moscow hoping to find a job and lodging. He managed to find a job in construction and his salary was rather decent for those times. The better part of his salary was sent to us in Vitebsk. Soon the organization where my father worked was closed down and father remained jobless. Again he was looking for a job. As soon as he found one, he invited us in Moscow.
In 1926 we moved to father. We lived in one room of 9,5 sq. m. Father worked very hard. In 1928 he lost job again. Father and Raisa vended cigarettes. Only in 1929 father found a job at the construction site. He worked and studied at the evening department of Moscow construction institute. In spite of the fact that our living was very hard father managed to graduate from the institute.
All our neighbors were Russian and we were the only Jewish family in the entire house. However we did not feel anti-Semitism coming from them, though. We got along very well and were on friendly terms. Though there was one exception: our neighbor, who worked for NKVD [13] as a janitor. She liked to eavesdrop to our conversations standing by our door.
Parents (I considered Raisa to be my mother and was always thankful to that wonderful woman and later on in my story I would refer to her as to my mother - the way I have been calling her all my life) spoke Yiddish between themselves but out of all children only elder brother Evsey understood it. First he went to cheder and then to the compulsory Jewish school. We, the younger, did not know Yiddish. Parents wanted us to speak pure Russian as they thought it would make our lifes easier. Parents also knew how to write in Yiddish. Raisa even composed verses in Yiddish during war times.
I cannot say how religious my parents were. All I know is that they observed Jewish traditions. We had separate dishes for milk and meat courses and mother closely followed for us not to confuse anything. Mother enjoyed cooking traditional Jewish dishes. She was a good cook.
We marked the major Jewish holidays in our family. Pesach was the sacred day for my parents. Even when there was a lack of products in Moscow father used to say: ”How can we do without gefilte fish on Pesach?”. He got up very early and spent hours in the lines to buy the fish and always managed to get fish home. Mother baked matzah and cooked traditional Paschal dishes. During the entire Paschal period there was no bread in the house, we ate only matzah. For Pesach we always had boiled chicken, gefilte fish, all kinds of tsimes, strudel with jam, raisons and nuts. We also had Paschal dishes, which were kept in a separate drawer. It was taken out only on Pesach.
Parents fasted on Yom Kippur, but they did not make children do that.
On Friday evening we had the rite to light the candles. Mother made a festive dinner. But on Saturday father went to work. It was an official working day and father could not miss it.
Father had tallit and tefillin. Synagogue was rather far away from our house, but father went there on Saturday after work. Mother rarely went to the synagogue, on Jewish holidays. Parents did not teach us how to pray and did not tell us about the history of Jewish peoples. There were the years when the Soviet regime undertook an active struggle against religion [14] and parents did not want to aggravate the situation with our Jewish history for us not to stick out.
I went to Russian compulsory school at the age of 8.
Besides father was on good terms with his colleagues, school and institute friends. Not all of them were Jews. In our family nationality factor was not the most important one. The doors of our house were open to everybody. Mother liked to receive guests.
When I go back to my school years I understand that almost all my friends were Russian and the nationality factor did not stand in the way of our friendship. I did not feel anti-Semitism and did not even understand what it was like.
I was a pioneer at school [All-Union pioneer organization] [16], then a Komsomol [17] member. I was an active member of society.
I do not know where and when my parental grandfather Gesel-Tsodik Karpas was born. He was a forester.
Grandmother apprenticed my father to the wood-carver since early teens. Father had been an apprentice for 4 years, which was a hard and painstaking. It caused the myopia because eyes were strained. When father understood that he would not be able to use his potential, he went to the Russian city Saratov [800 km to the east from Moscow] and entered construction school. He did well at school and decided to go on with his education upon finishing school. He went to Saint-Petersburg to take entrance exams at the Institute of Civil Engineering. Back in that time there was a 5-per cent admission quota for the Jews [percent of Jews admitted to higher educational institutions] [4]. Father passed several exams and flunked one. I do not know whether my father was not admitted because of his nationality or the lack of knowledge. Father went to the town Valuiki [about 630 km to the south from Moscow] and found a job as a construction/technician. Father liked to tell about his life in Valuiki. Both the workers and the management treated him very well and appreciated as a good specialist. Father learnt a lot in construction. He was supposed to tackle technical tasks independently and it was very useful for him. He did not feel anti-Semitism. Judging from his own experience father said that anti-Semitism was displayed in big cities and provincial people were much more tolerant.
In 1911 my father was drafted in the tsarist army. Father went though a physical in Vilnius and he was recognized unfit for the army service as he had poor eye-sight. When the military clerk was issuing a document for my father, he said that father’s name did not sound Lithuanian and put him Karpis. So the last name Karpis remained and father’s children and grandchildren got that name as well. Father did not change his name officially but Haim-Dovid Karpis is written in all his documents. In Valuiki father was called Russian name Efim [common name] [5], which was euphonious with his original name Haim.
My maternal grandfather Leizer-Aba Tsentsiper was involved in wood processing, timber rafting and timber trade.
The family was rather well-off. Grandfather made a lot of money. His house was open to friends. He generously helped them. I think the family was religious, which was traditional for those times. Grandfather clearly and fairly understood that apart from Jewish education children were supposed to get the secular one. The three of them finished lyceums. I do not know whether they went to Jewish lyceums. I know that mother was fluent in Yiddish, German and Russian. When the sons finished studies they started helping grandfather with the forestry.
Alexander Tsvey
At that time mother worked as a director of the production and studies workshops.
Then we had classes on shooting-range. I was an excellent marksman. In June mother came to Ufa for couple of days. I was so happy to spend those days with my mother. The commander gave me leave for couple of days. In late June the load was even harder on the soldiers. In the mourning we were awaken by alarm. In the afternoon we were supposed to run with gas-masks. How could I have stood that and found stamina?! I think my energy was coming from the thirst for knowledge nurtured by mother. Not all cadets were able to overcome the difficulties in the studies. I noticed the gloomy looks and retarded walk of some soldiers. They hardly spoke and remained introverted. Maybe those guys were thinking of the coming battles and the consequences? Most often guys like that were expelled from school at the rank of sergeant and sent in the lines.
Our train came to Ufa on the 12th of January 1943. The school was in the city center. The auditoriums and barracks with double-tiered bunks were in the 3-storied premises. Upon arrival we went to the bathhouse. We were given uniforms, solder’s boots; we were taught how to put foot wraps on. Then we were shown our bunks. I was to sleep on the upper bunk. We started school immediately. March drilling, crawling, studies on mortar guns and infantry military statute. We hardly had any leisure time. We got up at 6 and went to bed at 23. We had one hour of rest after lunch. Even on Sunday we had to do something- clean the territory or ski etc. When we ran out of food brought from home, we were starving even thought the cadet’s ration was not bad for that time: 800 grams of bread, 50 grams of butter, 65 grams of sugars, but the feeling of constant hunger was caused by a significant physical loading. I was perseverant in military studies. I took a keen interest in gun studies, taught by senior lieutenant Nazarov. He was an intelligent red-haired man of medium height, aged about thirty. Nazarov did not conceal his emotions when cadets did not solve or understand the task. Once he loudly made a remark on my success: "Look... Tsvey –well done and as for the rest – vice versa!" The guys kept on teasing me calling me “Well done". Later on Nazarov wrote me warm words in his letter to the front, then we did not keep in touch.
In December 1942 I was drafted in the army. I was in the 10th grade and had not turned 18 yet. I and some of my classmates were sent to Ufa [Bashkyrya, about 1200 km to the east from Moscow] infantry school, to the mortar gun battalion. At school I was issued a certificate that I finished the first half year with straight excellent marks.
Shortly after my arrival in the camp I had sharp abdominal pain and fever during volleyball game. I was isolated and I did not feel any better. They called Ambulance. They said I had an acute appendicitis. I was taken to hospital, straight on the operation table. It happened on 22 June 1941 when World War II was unleashed. When I was on the operation table, Germans had already started bombing Moscow. The nurses took us to the air-raid shelter. In a month I was discharged from the hospital, but my wound still did not heal up.
I often read in memoirs of different people that World War II was unexpected. It is not true, everybody understood that we would not escape war, besides soviet propaganda had been disseminating that thought starting from junior school age. Since childhood we were taught that our invincible army would crash any enemy and if a а guile enemy attacked our country, the war would be over very soon on his territory. Schoolchildren were taught at civil defense class how to shoot, use personal protective equipment, render assistance to the suffering and wounded. We were raised with patriotic movies, faming our country and army. When in Germany fascists came to power, soviet regime condemned them. Anti-fascist movies were demonstrated in our cinemas, namely «Professor Mamlock» [16], «The Oppenheim Family» [‘Semya Opengeym’ 1939, feature film about a tragic fate of a Jewish family in the Nazi Germany. Producer: Grigoriy Roshal. Story based on Lion Feuchtwanger’s Die Openhemern]. Then Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression agreement was signed [Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact] [17], and anti-fascist campaign was put to end. There were no more anti-fascist movies and propaganda. Of course, many people were bewildered.
Uncle Fyodor was a frontier man by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. He was promoted to the rank of a major no matter that his brother was repressed. It was Stalin’s politics- imprison one and persecute – another.
Efim was involved in commerce in Moscow and was promoted rather swiftly. He was assigned deputy chairman of the all-union procurement organization Tsentrosoyuz, which bought out and sold production manufactured by different small-scale companies. Efim had a personal car, which was rare back in that time. He was assigned to the same post after World War II as well. Efim was married. His wife’s name was Roza. They had two children - daughter Lina and son Mikhail. When Uncle Efim became a dignitary, he was literally made to join the party. He also talked his younger brothers Fyodor and Joseph into moving to Moscow. Efim took good care of them as they were poor orphans. Brother welcomed soviet regime and became its active sticklers. Joseph was an active Komsomol [4] member. He married a Jewish girl Sara, also Komsomol member. Joseph was a passionate orator, devoted to the ideas of the party and revolution. He was a political go-getter. In 1934 he became the secretary of the party committee of one of the largest plants in Moscow (I do not remember which one). Then he was assigned the secretary of the regional party committee and then later on the secretary of Kursk [about 450 km to the south from Moscow] municipal party committee. Joseph did very well before the outbreak of repressions [Great Terror] [5]. Then in 1938 there was a brief article in the paper «The Secretary of Kursk municipal party committee is mistaken», wherein Joseph was unfairly castigated. He went to Moscow to seek truth and did not come back. He was arrested and in 1938 shot without trial. We found about it only in the 1960s when we got his rehabilitation certificate [Rehabilitation in the Soviet Union] [6], but back in 1937 mother had been staying by walls of NKVD [7] days and nights and still did not manage to find anything about the brother. They even did not let her give him a parcel with the rusks and tobacco. I had never met a more decent and honest man than my uncle Joseph. Two of Joseph’s children survived- sons Vladimir and Stanislav. Vladimir now lives in Israel. I correspond with him. Stanislav immigrated to the USA in the 1990s.
Our family was not touched by repressions after death of uncle Joseph. Before leaving for Moscow he wrote letter to Stalin asking to look into the issue and exonerate his honest name. I wrote all his letters. Joseph wrote that he was a loyal son of the party and we knew that it was true. All of us were aware that it was unjust but he could not have thought that Stalin had something to do with that. We thought that all those things were done behind his back and believed that Stalin would look into the issue and punish the guilty. We did not associate Stalin with the assassination of Kirov [14], loved by all people. We were shocked by it as well as by the wave of new repressions. We merely cursed the enemies of the Soviet regime [enemy of the people] [15].
Officially I did not change my name. I did not want people to think that I changed my name to conceal my nationality. I was not going to do that. Jewish people have double name, so have I - Alexander Israel.