My grandfather was an authoritative person. He was an assistant attorney, and the story goes that he couldn’t stand any violation of the law. They told a story in the family how once he saw a drunken policeman walking along and beating a Jewish boy. My grandfather took this policeman by his collar, tore off his shoulder straps, slapped him on the face with those shoulder straps and let the Jewish boy go. He had to hide in people’s attics for a long time afterwards!
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Displaying 17221 - 17250 of 50826 results
Lidia Korotina
My maternal grandparents’ family observed the Sabbath and Jewish holidays.
My mother died in 1967. Despite ill health, she was a very vigorous and strong person. She was a very kind woman and could deal with hardships. Her youngest sister married my father’s brother Ponia, who met her when she was living with us. He took her to Kharkov, where hey lived happily until 1942, when the fascists killed them in the street in Kirovograd. My grandfather and grandmother were also killed by fascists in the street in Kirovograd. They had a small apartment in Kirovograd on the ground floor. My grandfather didn’t want to leave his home. When the Germans came they chased all Jewish people out into the streets from their homes. They were all going along the streets. My grandfather had a sort of heart attack and couldn’t walk. He stopped, but the Germans didn’t like it and shot both of them there, in the street.
In Nikolaev, we lived in a ground floor apartment at 44, Plekhanovskaya street. We had two rooms with a small hall between them, and two verandahs. My father worked as consultant at the Dneprobug organization, which was concerned with construction of the river fleet and other river projects. He was a state expert for investigating cases. He was very smart and intelligent, and he worked in forensic medicine until the end of his life. He wasn’t a member of the Communist Party.
Mamma didn’t work. We had a daytime maid. We also had a cook, Maria Kirillovna. She was a Russian woman and a very good cook. She didn’t sit at the table with us. She first served our meals and then she had her meal in the kitchen.
I went to a secondary school and was a pioneer. I remember wearing a red necktie. I knew that I was a Jew from the very beginning. I knew this because one of my grandfathers was named Haim, and the other was called Brodskiy -- typical Jewish names. I didn’t notice any anti-Semitism at school, though, as there were Jews, Russians and German pupils in our class.
I read about the famine (in the 1930s) in books. We didn’t feel it. Nikolaev was a rich southern town. I don’t remember anyone from our family or anyone from the area starving.
I don’t remember any specific conversations in our family about politics or about Stalin. When we heard what was happening around we were horrified. This person was in exile, that one arrested – terrible, we thought, something was wrong there. However, we couldn’t figure it out.
In our family they spoke very little Yiddish. The Jewish question was not touched upon during the pre-war years. The nationality of our friends never mattered. My mother and father never cared about it either.
In 1940 I entered the Philological Department at Odessa University. I had no problems in entering it or studying there. I enjoyed studying there. I had friends: Tamara Trilistskaya and Faina Nikiforova. There were many boys among our friends. We loved to go to the Opera Theater. We had classes in the evening. After classes we went to the theater, arriving for the second or third act. And we always sat in the gallery.
I vividly remember June 22, 1941. It was a Sunday, and I was planning to go see Mirra Yanover, my classmate, who was staying at her dacha, or summerhouse, to pick up some notes to prepare for my tests at the Institute. I went by tram. It passed by a military college. There were soldiers lining up in the yard, and people in the tram talked about what it might mean. I said that I thought it was some kind of training. We were totally convinced that nothing negative would happen. We were sure that the war would finish in a month’s time with our victory.
It was still possible to buy train tickets, but when we arrived at Dnepropetrovsk a bombardment destroyed the bridge. The train arrived at one side of the Dnieper river and was to depart from the opposite bank. Air raids began and the three of us ran over some plank work to catch the train. From Makhachkala we went to Krasnovodsk by boat and were planning to go to Tashkent, where Odessa University had been evacuated. We went part of the way in a railcar and another part in a carriage with plank beds and hay to sleep on. There were no comforts, of course. At one station, Tikhoretskaya, my father went out to get some water and then cried out to us to get off the train, as his mother and sister Sima were there. Sima was a doctor with a military unit. My parents and I went on our way, but Sima and Grandmother stayed at that station. Someone on the train told us that the University was in Samarkand and we got off the train there.
I entered the Medical University and lived in the students’ hostel. My Dad and Mamma rented a room in the outskirts of the city. There were ten girls in the room where I lived. We were of different nationalities: Jewish, Korean, Lithuanian, a Jewish girl from Gomel. We all got along and there was no talk about national origin. We shared any food that we had. I received 200 grams of bread on my ration card and I ate it during classes. I also bought a kilo of grapes. After classes I went to my parents. My father worked at the Department of Justice. And my mamma loved farming. She helped their landlady in her vegetable garden and farmyard. When I came there they gave me lots of food. I ate all I could eat. My mother also gave me food to take back with me, but on my way back to the University I would finish all the food that was supposed to last for three days, because I knew what it was like to feel starved.
We had studied at the University for some time when they announced that it was moving to Tashkent, because some military college had moved to Samarkand and they needed facilities to house them. Then I entered the Uzbek Medical Institute and studied there for half a year. But when it came to doing laboratory work, and they brought human fingers on a tray (for us to work on) I knew I couldn’t see things like that. There was nowhere else to study except a Teachers’ Evening Institute. Given my University studies, I was accepted as a second year student. I also had to get a job, and I went to work at the industrial complex. I maintained their card index log. I received a bread card for this work and in addition could have some kind of soup in the canteen. This lasted until 1943. Then we moved to another apartment. In 1943, my Dad was summoned to Kiev after the city was liberated. He left, and my mother and I stayed in Tashkent. We were starving. It was cold in our small apartment – there was a small room and some kind of a tambour. Somebody brought us a huge pumpkin to eat. I remember sitting and crying because I was so hungry. My mother didn’t work. She was seriously ill. She had severe diabetes and a heart condition. But still she got up at four in the morning and went to unload bread to get me a loaf.
I met my future husband at Odessa University. His name was Mikhail Shoihet.. He wrote to his parents and asked them to find out where I was. They asked their acquaintances in Odessa and someone told them that I was in Samarkand. They came to Samarkand and met with my father. Then they told Misha my address. He began to write me poems and letters. He asked me to come and visit him. My parents and I went to visit him in August 1942. He was an instructor in a military unit in Turkmenia, 40 kilometers from the border. The heat was oppressive there, over 40 degrees Celsius. There was sand all around, not a single tree. He told me that things were very uncertain and that his unit could be sent to the front - and so we got married right then, on August, 8, 1942. To be sure, there was no wedding celebration amid all the war and hunger. We simply registered.
On November 26, 1943 we received a telegram from my father telling us to come to Kiev. It was a long trip by train. We arrived in May 1944. Dad had given us the following address: 18, Bolshaya Zhytomirskaya, Apt. 3. We lived in this apartment as one family with Alisa Ivanovna and Arnold Romanovich for a year and a half or two years. There were three rooms, but there were also other tenants. Then Arnold received a two-room apartment and moved out with Alisa. Then my father received a separate apartment, and we moved there.
Meanwhile my husband was transferred from Turkmenia to Leningradskaya village, in the Krasnodarskiy region. In 1945 I went there to join him. He was with a military unit, an air squadron. At four o’clock in the morning the engines started making a terrible noise. It was all very tense – every day somebody crashed or died. I worked at a school teaching Russian. We rented a room in a house. It was a big room with five windows. There was a stove and it burned reeds. The stove took a lot of fuel. We went to cut it on the plots of land assigned to us. It was very cold, but very exciting. It was beautiful there in the village, only very cold. At night the dogs barked. There was a well in the yard. I would put on my husband’s fur boots and go out to bring in water.
Then the war was over. The demobilization order was issued at the end of 1946. We returned to Kiev. My husband went to work for the aviation newspaper and also studied at the University’s extramural department. I taught Russian in a girls’ school. I had graduated from Kiev Pedagogical Institute by then.
Then I worked in another school for 19 years. This school was located at the poorest neighborhood in Kiev – Tatarka. I taught literature and aesthetics. At one point, Pavel Yakopvlevich Gomolskiy, the administrator of the Philharmonic, came to school to organize a music and literature lecture center. I offered my services as a lecturer. He invited me to the Philharmonic for an interview, and I got the job. They paid very little, however. I earned 18-20 rubles per month, but it was an interesting job, with possibilities. It was a new environment for me. My pedagogical experience and ability to communicate with children turned out to be very helpful. I worked at both the school and at the Philharmonic until 1971, when a new director was appointed. He told me to make a choice between the school and the lecture center. I left the school and came to work at the Philharmonic. At this lecture center we set up a program on “Music in Lenin’s life”. Then I made two other programs on Lenin: “Vladimir Lenin at the auditorium” and “Portrait and time.” We believed in what we were popularizing, and each time we found some features in Lenin that confirmed his extraordinary personality. It was different from how our leaders behaved. I worked for few years with a symphony orchestra. On Sunday they gave concerts for youth in the Column Hall of the Philharmonic. I worked there until 1986.
My nationality at that time already imposed borders that I was not supposed to cross. There were limitations, but I didn’t realize it at that time. After the war, I felt what it meant to be a Jew. Nobody called me “zhydovka” but I felt some discrimination. I think it was in 1952 that they were sending two or three people from Ukraine to the All-Union meeting in Moscow, and I was among them. I was the only aesthetics lecturer, so I was invited. And then when the Chief of Department saw my nationality in my passport he said, “Why a Jew? Couldn’t you find a Russian?” And then in 1953 I took entrance exams to the post-graduate course at the Pedagogical Institute. I passed the exams in German and Marxism-Leninism with the highest of grades, but they spoke to me in a very rude manner and told me that I had not been admitted. You know, it is always hard to pinpoint just why one is rejected in the artistic mileux - whether it is because of jealousy or because of nationality. Now I understand why I was never awarded the title of Honored Employee of Culture or some other title.
Mamma always loved the Jewish New Year celebrations, and fasting on Yom Kippur was mandatory for her, too. Recently, I too have begun fasting. We celebrated Purim and Pesach. But I don’t remember celebrating other holidays. For Pesach, we cleaned up our home and put beautiful kosher dishes on the table. Mamma called them Easter dishes. There was everything that should be on the table at Pesach – matso, bitter herbs, eggs, chicken. Besides, mamma cooked a lot of other delicious things. There was no bread in the house during Pesach. Our friends and relatives came to us, and we all enjoyed ourselves. It was a holiday, but we didn’t have strict rules for the celebration. We had plenty of food at home. In summer we had an opportunity to go on vacation. However, it all seemed an ordinary thing at that time. We didn’t have any luxuries, no dacha or car, and we didn’t travel, although I have started travelling in recent years.
But the propaganda and the way we were brought up were very strong. We were raised with a strong faith that everything in our country did was correct, that we were the most fair country, and that all our laws were are in the name of the people and the life of the people. We had no idea that life could be different.
Ida Shteinberg, the wife of Abram Katsnelson, was a fellow student and friend of mine. Abram Katsnelson is a famous Ukrainian poet. He is Jewish, but Ukrainian was his mother tongue, and he wrote in Ukrainian his whole life. Still, his books were not published. His brother, Ilia Stebun, was deputy director of the Institute of Literature. He was accused of cosmopolitanism and even had to move away from here. He first moved to Zhytomir and then to Dnepropetrovsk or Zaporozhiye. “Rootless cosmopolitans” – many of my friends had to quit their jobs because of their Jewish nationality. I can remember meetings at the Union of Writers where many Jews were accused of communicating with “cosmopolititans.” I remember this well.
I also give lectures at Hesed (the Jewish charity organization) or in the libraries.
I met some Hesed employees and I feel that they need me to give lectures there. Later they suggested that I open a dining room for single Jews at my place, and for five years I cooked lunch twice a week for eight Jewish people who came to my home. They were all different from each other, but gradually they formed a sort of family. We talked – they were all intelligent people. We celebrated holidays and birthdays. They were all single people and it was good that they could feel that somebody needed them. I enjoyed doing it, although it was tiring.
We celebrated all the holidays and I tried to learn as much as possible about the traditions. I asked people at Hesed and they told me. We celebrated Pesach and Rosh Hashanah, Chanukah, and Purim according to the rules. We attended workshops at Hesed about holidays and celebrations. Those eight people still call me every now and then, and I realize that this time was a big part of our lives. This drew me closer to the Jewish world.
I’ve changed the subject of my lectures. My lectures used to be about art and outstanding people in art. Nowadays they have to do with Jewish life. I learned a lot about famous Jews -- writers, poets, and artists, and I read a lot about the Holocaust. I try to impart all this to people who for many years, like me, had no possibility to learn about it.
I work in libraries a lot, and I learn about the things I never even guessed before. It’s always good to know as much as possible.
We celebrated all the holidays and I tried to learn as much as possible about the traditions. I asked people at Hesed and they told me. We celebrated Pesach and Rosh Hashanah, Chanukah, and Purim according to the rules. We attended workshops at Hesed about holidays and celebrations. Those eight people still call me every now and then, and I realize that this time was a big part of our lives. This drew me closer to the Jewish world.
I’ve changed the subject of my lectures. My lectures used to be about art and outstanding people in art. Nowadays they have to do with Jewish life. I learned a lot about famous Jews -- writers, poets, and artists, and I read a lot about the Holocaust. I try to impart all this to people who for many years, like me, had no possibility to learn about it.
I work in libraries a lot, and I learn about the things I never even guessed before. It’s always good to know as much as possible.
I go to the synagogue more often, too. I do not always understand what is going on there, but when I come there and take my seat, I have a feeling of peace. All my troubles leave me. I think about my loved ones and myself. However, there are many things that I don’t know or don’t understand.
Irina Voinova
I don’t know if my mom ever studied anywhere, but she was very literate nonetheless. She wrote in Yiddish very well. Both my dad and mom’s parents also wrote well in Yiddish. And Daddy, generally speaking, knew several languages very well, including Estonian, Hebrew, and German.
Granny and Grandpa stayed in Petrograd, where Grandpa worked at a tobacco factory as a mill-hand. In 1942, during the war, they were evacuated to Molotov (now Perm), where they remained until the their deaths. They died in the 1950s, almost at the same time. They were religious people. I was told that Grandpa sang in the synagogue choir.
, Russia
My maternal grandfather, Jakov Josifovich Ansher, was born in 1870 in Ponevezh, in Lithuania. He completed four grades of high school (gymnasium) and worked as a teacher in Ponevezh.
During the war Aunt Raya worked as a hospital nurse at the hospital in Leningrad. I don’t know what she did after the war. She died in Leningrad in 1983.