The last time our family was together was on 22nd June 1941 [9]. This was the first day of the war. On this day only the husband of Abraham's sister was away. He was summoned to the military training course at the Brest fortress. Riva came to visit us on this day. She worked as a planner on the field aerodrome construction site. Lev was summoned to the military registration office, Riva went back to work and so did I. There was no certainty about what was going to happen.
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peter rabtsevich
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Panic started in town on the night of 24th June. It was caused by the explosion of the gunpowder storage facilities of the former Polish Infantry Regiment 84. People started running across the bridge to the right bank of the Pina River in the direction of David-Gorodok. My brothers and I also left town. On the 3rd day we reached the former Soviet-Polish border, but we didn't have pass permits and the Soviet military didn't let us cross it. We returned to Pinsk. I went back to work. The management left Pinsk on a truck on 24th June. The commandant of the Dnieper Fleet was the only authority left in town.
The Germans entered Pinsk and their major goal was to exterminate all Jews. 30 Jewish men were shot in Pinsk on the first day of occupation. One of them was a barber from Logishyn. He fell in the pit and the Germans thought he was dead. After the Germans left he got out of the pit and returned home. In 1942, when this man was in the ghetto, a German policeman found a piece of bread that he had with him, when returning to the ghetto from work, and shot him.
On 9th August 1941, 10,000 Jewish men were shot in Pinsk. The youngest were 6 year-old boys. My brothers David and Aron were among the ones shot on this day. I survived, because when the Germans came to our house I was in the toilet in the yard. My father also survived hiding in the attic. He was hiding because on 7th August the German commandant of Pinsk issued an order saying that all unemployed Jews had to come to the railway station to be sent to work. On 8th August a few hundred men went to the station. They were taken to a potato field and shot. A few people survived and returned to town. The news spread very fast, and on 9th August nobody went to the railway station. The Germans swooped on the town, and captives were shot in the woods near the village of Kozliakovichi. On the same day the Germans demanded that Jews turn in their gold, silver and copper. They stated that if they didn't do it the result would be a second round of shooting.
When the Germans arrived in town I was offered to resume my former job. They probably didn't have a replacement. I continued working as a communications mechanic at the River Transport Agency. Our manager, Malinovskiy, employed three more Jews called Botvinnik, Epshtein and Radkevich. The four of us survived the shooting on 9th August 1941.
In September the town council in Pinsk issued yellow German identity cards, with a stamp reading 'Jew' on the front page, to all Jews.
Jewish people could stay in their apartments, but they weren't allowed to walk on pavements, talk to non-Jewish men or go to the market.
Jewish people could stay in their apartments, but they weren't allowed to walk on pavements, talk to non-Jewish men or go to the market.
Abraham had escaped from German captivity in Czechoslovakia and returned to Pinsk in December 1941.
,
1941
See text in interview
In 1944 Pinsk was liberated. I wrote a letter to our acquaintances in Kovnyatin village. My brother Lev also wrote a letter to this village from the army. He served at the 2nd Belarus front. We found each other and felt better from a moral point of view. We wrote to each other. My brother was wounded on his lung and sent to a hospital in Moscow.
,
1944
See text in interview
My brother was wounded on his lung and sent to a hospital in Moscow. There he met a nurse that was looking after him. Her name was Tamara. She came from Moscow and was half-Russian, half-Georgian. They got married.
, Russia
After the war Lev graduated from the Moscow Medical Institute and worked as a doctor.
After the war Lev graduated from the Moscow Medical Institute and worked as a doctor. He was a surgeon in Balashyha.
On 1st May 1942 we were taken to the fenced ghetto. Zavalnaya, Logishynskaya, Gorky and Sovietskaya streets formed the borderline of this ghetto, fencing about 250 buildings within the ghetto. The Jewish cemetery was also within the ghetto. Our family lived in a 6 square meter room in the ghetto. There were six of us: my father, my mother, my sister Esther, her husband Abraham Warshavskiy, their daughter, who was born in 1939, and I. Abraham had escaped from German captivity in Czechoslovakia and returned to Pinsk in December 1941.
Conditions in the ghetto were terrible. Those who worked were allowed to leave the ghetto and they could exchange their clothing for food. It was forbidden to bring food into the ghetto. If the policemen found any food at the entrance gate they shot people immediately. It wasn't allowed to walk in the ghetto before 7am. If somebody went out to fetch some water from the pump before 7am he was shot. People in the ghetto ate anything they could find and many of them, especially older people and children, were dying from dysentery, dystrophy and other diseases. Initially there were about 28,000 people in the ghetto. Many Jews came to Pinsk from surrounding towns and villages trying to escape from shootings and thus increasing the number of the Jewish population.
There were weekly supplies of bread to the ghetto. Employed Jews received 200 grams, children 120 grams, and those who didn't go to work 80 grams of bread. But anyway, the bread they supplied was only sufficient for 150-200 families, and there were over 3,000 families there.
Conditions in the ghetto were terrible. Those who worked were allowed to leave the ghetto and they could exchange their clothing for food. It was forbidden to bring food into the ghetto. If the policemen found any food at the entrance gate they shot people immediately. It wasn't allowed to walk in the ghetto before 7am. If somebody went out to fetch some water from the pump before 7am he was shot. People in the ghetto ate anything they could find and many of them, especially older people and children, were dying from dysentery, dystrophy and other diseases. Initially there were about 28,000 people in the ghetto. Many Jews came to Pinsk from surrounding towns and villages trying to escape from shootings and thus increasing the number of the Jewish population.
There were weekly supplies of bread to the ghetto. Employed Jews received 200 grams, children 120 grams, and those who didn't go to work 80 grams of bread. But anyway, the bread they supplied was only sufficient for 150-200 families, and there were over 3,000 families there.
We didn't have a wedding party - life was too hard at the time.
I moved in with my wife. Later I received a room in a communal apartment. There were two other families living there, Russians, but we got along very well.
In 1959 I received a two-bedroom apartment. There were two rooms, a kitchen and a shower, located in the kitchen.
After our daughter was born my wife quit her job. When our youngest child went to school she went to work as an accountant at the kindergarten department of the river port.
From 1944 there was only one synagogue left in Podol. Almost all Jews came to the synagogue to pray on holidays. They crowded in the street at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. There was a radio installed in the synagogue and people outside could hear the singing and praying. In 1946 the authorities closed this radio office, but people still crowded near the synagogue. Many people didn't have prayer books, but they wanted to pay tribute to the past and remember that they were Jews.
There were no Jewish schools after the war. The only place where Hebrew was taught was the Christian theological school in St. Andrew's Church. Its students studied Hebrew to be able to read holy books in the original language. There was a group of students officially studying Hebrew at the university. It wasn't allowed to study Hebrew or Yiddish at home. If somebody at work or educational institutions had found out anything about it, it might have resulted in problems, including firing. The only magazine issued in Yiddish was the Birobidyan Heymland, the Land of Birobidjan [13], that described the happy life of the Jews in the USSR. I read this magazine throughout all those years just to remember the language. Jewish theaters were closed. There was a Jewish singer, Tamara Hanum, but she vanished later. In 1950 I went to the concert of Alexandrovich, a Lithuanian Jew. He sang Jewish songs. The media called him a cantor and propagandist of Zionism.
There were many Jews in our navigation office. Zhelezniak, a Jew, was first deputy director of our office until the fight against cosmopolites [14] began. He was appointed by the Moscow management, but the Ukrainian central committee never approved the position. About ten other supervisors in our office were Jewish.
In 1948 the struggle against cosmopolites began. It was similar to German nazism to me. Many Jews lost their managing positions, but they stayed at their workplaces as deputy managers or got lower positions. Many writers and artists took pseudonyms because they were Jews. There were publications in newspapers revealing their actual names and stating that they were doing a lot of harm to the Soviet state by working under pseudonyms.
In 1948 the struggle against cosmopolites began. It was similar to German nazism to me. Many Jews lost their managing positions, but they stayed at their workplaces as deputy managers or got lower positions. Many writers and artists took pseudonyms because they were Jews. There were publications in newspapers revealing their actual names and stating that they were doing a lot of harm to the Soviet state by working under pseudonyms.
In 1953 the Doctors' Plot [15] began. The wife of the Minister of Health at the time was a Jewish woman, and he lost his job because he didn't want to denounce and leave her.
Our human resources manager, Platonov, had a Jewish wife, too. He told me that he was summoned to the party committee. They told him to divorce his wife if he wanted to keep his position. He refused to leave his family and was fired. He moved to Novosibirsk and worked as a lecturer at the River Institute. Later he became Rector, and then Dean at the Leningrad Institute of Water-Transport Engineers.
This was the third time I faced anti-Semitism in my life: the first time was polonization and open anti-Semitism, the second time was the public extermination of Jews by the Germans, and the third time was Soviet anti-Semitism.
, Ukraine
Children of our friends and acquaintances had studied well at school, but they were not admitted to higher educational institutions.
The nationality in my passport was 'Russian' until 1959, but I never concealed the fact that I was a Jew. In my birth certificate that was reissued I legalized the name of Rabtsevich because this name saved my life. In my passport I have the name of Peter Ruvinovich Rabtsevich, a Jew.
, Ukraine
In March 1953 Stalin died. People were crying, because their 'father' had passed away. They were feeling confused and uncertain about their future. But life became easier. While Stalin was alive all managers had to stay late at work. Meetings sometimes lasted until 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. But Khruschev [16] changed this procedure and fixed an 8-hour working day. After Stalin died doctors were rehabilitated. The rehabilitation of political prisoners also began. Khrushchev denounced the cult of Stalin at the 20th Party Congress [17].
I have always valued my past. I have never forgotten that I'm a Jew. I have always celebrated Jewish holidays, although they were always working days, and it was impossible to go to the synagogue in the afternoon. I always went to the synagogue in the evening after work. On the Jahrzeit of the death of my family I went to the synagogue before work to order mourning prayers. There were 33 members in my family. And there are only three survivors: my brother Lev, my sister Riva and I.
After the war I worked as a technician, then I became a site manager, and later I was promoted to the position of a leading engineer. I studied at the Communications Faculty of the Kiev Institute of Water-Transport Engineers by correspondence. I graduated in 1959 and received my diploma. I developed some technical ideas, and my work was displayed at the Exhibition of Achievements of Public Economy in Moscow and Kiev. I developed a radio facility that allowed contacting any telephone from a boat. Other improvements were related to automated telephone stations and long distance communication lines. I had a high salary and regular bonuses. Besides, I didn't have to buy clothes because I wore a military uniform at work.
The attitude towards those that were under occupation during the war was prejudiced. It was particularly difficult for Jews because people believed that if a Jew survived it was because he cooperated with the fascists. The first question people often asked was: 'How did you survive?'. I faced this attitude many times, especially from my supervisors. I didn't try to explain how I survived. I was a highly qualified employee and paid no attention to any abuse. When Pinsk was liberated I sent a request to the management for my transfer to Pinsk, but they declined.
My brother and I found our sister Riva in 1950. She lived in Priluki, Chernigov region. During the war Riva was a combat engineer. She was in Berlin at the end of the war, and after the war her military unit was transferred to Novocherkassk in the Caucasus. After the war Riva took part in the mine clearing of the Black Sea coast. While in the army Riva married her fellow military Kotov, a Russian man. Upon demobilization her husband got a job assignment with the district party committee in Priluki, and Riva became a controller at the local bank in town. She studied at the Belostok Business College by correspondence and became an accountant. Her husband went on business to Moscow and got Lev's address in the military party archives. He met Lev, and my brother informed me by cable that Riva had been found.
My daughter, Polina, graduated from the Electric Engineering Faculty at the Institute of Water-Transport Engineers. She is an engineer at the Glavrechflot design office. My son, Ilia, finished the Kiev River School and works at the navigation agency.