My mother told me about the famine of 1932-33 [the famine in Ukraine] [810]. She wanted my grandmother to come to live with us, but my grandmother refused because my father kept a pig, and thus our home wasn't kosher. My mother helped her Ukrainian neighbors and Jewish relatives by sharing food with them.
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Displaying 6061 - 6090 of 50826 results
dina orlova
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My mother made food on Fridays. She cooked food for two days since it wasn't allowed to light the fire on Saturdays. She made gefilte fish, two loaves of challah and cholent in a pot, which she put into the oven. Cholent was very delicious when it was taken out of the oven on the following day. My mother also made pancakes and baked strudel. On Friday evenings she put on her fancy dress, lit candles and said a prayer over them. My father came home after work on Friday evenings and had dinner with the family. He had to work on the collective farm on Saturdays, and my mother had to take care of our live-stock.
We celebratedobserved Jewish holidays. Our favorite holiday was Pesach. Special dishes and utensils were taken down from the attic. Sometimes we didn't have enough Pesach utensils, and my mother koshered everyday kitchen utensils so that we could use them for Pesach. They were cleaned with water and scrubbed with sand and ash before they were boiled in a big bowl with stones inside. The Soviet authorities closed the Jewish bakery, but Jewish women got together to bake matzah in the house across the street where we lived. lived to bake matsah. We didn't have any bread at home on Pesach. We had matszah made for our family from one pood [16 kg] of flour. A special motselakhmotseleh [round flat matszah cookie] was made for children. There was flour made from matsahmatzah in a mortar with a wooden pestle. The flour was sieved and what was left in the sieve my mother used for making dumplings for chicken broth. She made cakes, sponge cakes, bagels, fluden and cookies from matsahmatzah flour. She had special patterns for cookies: menorah shaped, magen Davidmogenduvid, tree-shaped, etc. There was also keyzl matsahand potato pancakes. Mother made chicken broth, meat stew and sweet and sour stew, mamalyga, cutlets with garlic sauce and gefilte fish. It took her a while to make all this food, but the family helped her. In the morning my parents went to the synagogue, and in the evening my father conducted seder. There were koyseskoisi for each member of the family and one for Elijah, the Prophet 9. My father had the biggest cup, we, children, had smaller cups. Adults had kosher wine and children had a little of it, too. My brother posed the traditional four questions [the mah nishtanah] in Yiddish to my father. My father responded in Hebrew. Then my father read from the Bible and we sang songs in Yiddish. My mother knew many of them, and they were beautiful songs. My father hid the afikoman, and one of the children had to find it. The afikoman was given back to my father for redemption.
On Yom Kippur my mother said a prayer during the kapores ritual at home, and my brother and I repeated her words. My parents fasted on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. In my mother's opinion my brother and I were too young to fast in our mother's opinion. I was 5-6 years old then.
On Chanukkah my mother lit one more candle in the Chanukah chanukkiyah every day. My brother and I got Chanukkah gelt. On Purim my mother made hamantashen, very delicious triangle pies stuffed with poppy seeds and nuts: gumentashen. Our father told us in Yiddish about the history and traditions of this holiday in Yiddish. On Sukkotah we used a room with a folding ceiling, which my mother decorated with ribbons and green branches. We had meals in this room.
I was eager to go to school. There was a Jewish elementary school in Ozarintsy. When my brother started to go to school I went with him. The teacher sent me home telling me that I was too young to go to school. I went to Uncle Mordkhe. He was husband of my grandmother's sister Ratsl.He didn't have any children and was always happy to see me. Mordkhe had a good education. He knew Hebrew very well, .so Hhe began to teach me Hebrew. My mother got rather scared when she heard about it .because the Soviet authorities persecuted such activities [during their struggle against religion] 11. My mother forbade me to study Hebrew. I wish she hadn't. I learned to read and write in Yiddish instead. My parents spoke Yiddish in the family. We communicated in Yiddish with Jewish children and in Ukrainian with our Ukrainian neighbors' children.
I was admitted to the Jewish elementary school at the age of 6.5 1/2 although the standard age was 8. It was an ordinary school except that all subjects were taught in Yiddish. We didn't study Hebrew or religion. I liked studying and was awas successful at school. We studied general subjects and were also taught moral principles.
We often visited my grandmother and grandfather in Murafa. My brother and I spent our vacations there. I always looked forward to these trips. ? I had many friends in Murafa. I was a naughty girl, I liked climbing trees and ride horses, which were at the collective farm. Sometimes we were riding to the lake with my father.
We heard about the beginning of the war through Molotov's 12 speech on the radio 11. Almost right away our retreating troops left and German troops arrived in Ozarintsy.
On the first day of the occupation the Germans took all Jews to the synagogue. They took 20 men and shot them near the town on theat same day. The Germans were going to set the synagogue on fire. I don't know what stopped them from doing it. In these first two days the local population robbed Jewish homes. When we returned home, two days later, we learned that our neighbor, whom my mother had given food during the famine, had taken away our feather mattress and sewing machine.
After some time the Germans left andRumanians Romanians came to the village instead. They fenced the Jewish neighborhood in the center of the village with barbed wire and set up guard posts. We were told that this was the area of the Jewish ghetto and that we weren't allowed to leave it. Our house was in the ghetto.
There was no school in the ghetto, but I was still eager to study. I gathered other children in the ghetto, and we began to make clay bricks that we dried in the sun. Then we made a small 'doghouse' which was to serve us as a school building. Of course, this doghouse was too small and only three to four people could fit into it. When the number of us reached about 20 we studied outside or in somebody's home. We had a teacher thatwho was a young inmate of the ghetto. His name was Yuzia.
The inmates of the ghetto tried to observe traditions. Men prayed a lot; they gathered every day. Since we had the biggest house they got together there for a minyan. Of course we couldn't celebrateobserve the holidays properly. I remember the most we could do was fast. We fasted on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and prayed to God to liberate us.
Our family was hiding inin the houses of Ukrainian families. My mother and I stayed in one house, and my brother and father were in a house in the neighboring street. However, when the Germans came to Ozarintsythe village the mistress of the house in which my mother and I had found shelter got scared. She feared that her family might suffer if the Germans found two Jews in her house. She gave us some Ukrainian clothes, embroidered shirts and self-made skirts, and buckets and sent us to the well. We gave the impression of being Ukrainian women fetching water. We didn't look like Jews. When the Germans approached us and asked if we had seen any Jews we replied that we hadn't. When they left we didn't go back to that Ukrainian house. Instead, we went to the house in which my brother and father were hiding. We were terrified when we didn't find them there. Later it turned out that they had seen us through the window and went to another part of the village hiding in a ravine. My mother and I found them there and stayed in that ravine overnight. On the next day Soviet troops came to Ozarintsy. We welcomed them cordially and were happy to be liberated.
I became a pioneer at school. It was quite a ceremony and a great holiday for me. We were patriots of our country. Lenin and Stalin were like gods to us. We learned poems and sang songs about them. We were firmly convinced that the Soviet Union had defeated fascism thanks to the leadership of Stalin. We always celebrated Soviet holidays, organized a concert and invited our parents to attend. In the 7th grade I became a Komsomol 13 member.
We liked Chernovtsy. It was a nice old town that hadn't been destroyed during the war. People talked Yiddish in the streets. There was a big synagogue, a Jewish school and a Jewish theater in town. Before World War II the majority of the population was Jewish. There was still a significant number of Jewish inhabitants left after the war.
We celebratedobserved Jewish traditions in Chernovtsy. My mother had our special dishes and tableware for Pesach moved to Chernovtsy along with our other belongings. There was a major clean-up of our flat before Pesach. We searched the rooms for breadcrumbs that were burned in the stove. We bought matsahmatzah supplied from Mohilev-Podolsk and Moldavia. My mother cooked all the traditional food on the holiday. Although we didn't have enough food on other days, she always managed to save some money for holidays to buy some chicken and fish. We didn't observe ShabbatSabbath because Saturday was a working day. On Friday evenings my mother lit candles and said a prayer. Then we sat down for dinner. There was no special food for these dinners. My parents went to the synagogue on Jewish holidays - Pesach, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Purim. Father conducted sSeder on the eve of Pesach. We fasted on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. We didn't conduct the kapores ritual because it was a problem to buy chicken. There was another famine in the late 1940s and there were no stocks in stores. Food was sold at the market, but at high prices. My mother had to use her imagination to feed the family.
My father couldn't find a job in Chernovtsy. He went to the vineyard in Yampol near Ivano-Frankovsk. He got a job as a forwarding agent for supplies of wine to stores in Chernovtsy.
There was no anti- Semitism right after the war, but later, in 1948, after the campaign against cosmopolitans 15, there were demonstrations of anti-Semitism in Chernovtsy. I was raised an internationalist and didn't make any difference between Jews and Russians. I spoke poor Russian: my mother tongue was Yiddish and I studied in a Ukrainian school. So one of my co-students began to tease me. I don't know whether she did it because I was Jewish or because she didn't like meit, but she pestered me until the end of my studies.
I finished college in 1951 and got a job assignment in Ivano-Frankovsk, a big town in Western Ukraine [300 km from Chernovtsy]. I was eager to study at the mMedical Institute, but in order to do so I needed a certificate of higher secondary education. I had a diploma of the college, but it was a different branch and therefore not valid for the Medical Institute. I went to study in the evening secondary school and kept it a secret that I had a college diploma. If they had found out they wouldn't have allowed me to study there. I worked in a bank at daytime and went to school in the evening. After finishing this school I received a certificate of secondary education.
Anti-Semitism got stronger after the dDoctors' cPlotase 16 in 14 1953. It was next to impossible for a Jewish girl to enter the Medical Institute in Chernovtsy and I went to Voronezh, Russia, in 1500 km from home. There were no Jews in that area historically and no anti-Semitism, accordingly. I had no problem entering the stomatological institute in Voronezh.
On 5th March 1953 Stalin died. I worked in Ivano-Frankovsk then. I was raised in blind admiration of Stalin, and his death was a tragedy for me. I couldn't help crying. I was surprised that my colleagues were almost happy about it. At that time I went on business to Bendery, a Moldavian town. I heard such terrible things about Stalin there! In general, the people were saying that it had been high time for him to go and that they couldn't wait to get rid of him. Even after the Twentieth Congress 17 of the Communist Party 15I couldn't believe that what Khrushchev 18 said 16about Stalin was true. Discernment came slowly and gradually.
It was next to impossible for a Jewish girl to enter the Medical Institute in Chernovtsy, so I went to Voronezh, Russia, 1,500 kilometers from home. There were no Jews in that area and, consequently, no anti- Semitism. I had no problem entering the Stomatological Institute in Voronezh. In VoronezhI lived in the hostel and shared a room with three other girls. We were industrious students. We read and studied a lot. I spent my vacations with my parents in Chernovtsy. My brother had graduated from the Medical Institute and worked as a cardiologist. I didn't face any anti-Semitism. Upon graduation I got a job assignment at the Stomatological Polyclinic in Chernovtsy where I worked as a dentist until my retirement.
My husband's real name was Efim Srulevich. Before our wedding he changed his typicalJewish surname to Orlov, a typical Russian surname. He probably thought this would make our life easier and our children would have fewer problems. We got married in 1962 and had a civil ceremony. Then he returned to Vinnitsa to finish his studies. When my husband returned we had a traditional Jewish wedding. We had a chuppah at home, and a rabbi from the synagogue conducted the wedding ceremony. The rabbi said what's traditionally said at weddings. My husband and I exchanged rings and then had a glass of wine given to us. We sipped wine from the glass and the rabbi told me to throw the glass to the ground and break it. We only invited our closest family and friends to our Jewish wedding party.
Efim was born in Dzhurin village, Vinnitsa region in 1931. His father, Shmil Srulevich, was the director of a storehouse before the war, and his mother, Etia Srulevich, was a housewife. Efim had a younger sister called Anna. During World War II their family was in the ghetto in Dzhurin.
Efim finished school after the war and served in the Soviet army in Germany [East Germany] for two years. After demobilization he worked as a bus driver, and later he entered the sStomatological fFaculty atof the mMedical School in Vinnitsa.
My husband and I observed Jewish traditions. Of course, it was difficult to follow the kashrut because there was no place to buy kosher products. On Friday evenings the family got together for prayers and the ceremony of lighting candles. We couldn't celebrate Shabbatobserve Sabbath because it was a working day, but we got together on all other Jewish holidays.
My daughter Svetlana was born in 1964, and my son Vladimir in 1966. He was circumcised. Our children were raised Jewish. We spoke Russian in the family, but we also taught the children Yiddish. They knew Jewish traditions and celebratedobserved Jewish holidays with us. My husband taught our son the traditional four questions [the mah nishtanah] to be asked at seder on Pesach. My husband didn't go to the synagogue at that time because the practice of religiosity was punished by the authorities.
We celebrated both Jewish and Soviet holidays. 9th May, Victory Day, was the best holiday ever! Every year on Victory Day we thanked God for our survival. On other holidays we just got together with friends for a party and to have a good time. We used to have up to 30 guests on every holiday. My husband liked singing Jewish songs on Jewish and Soviet holidays. We invited our Jewish friends on Jewish holidays. I made traditional Jewish food. I've always liked cooking and make delicious food: gefilte fish, chicken broth, chicken neck stuffed with liver and fried onions and strudels. On Purim I make gohameantasheny. On Pesach there's matsahmatzah at home and we follow all rules celebrating this holiday.
My father died in 1969. We buried him in the Jewish cemetery in Chernovtsy. Many people came to my father's funeral. The rabbi, who had conducted our wedding ceremony, was at the funeral. There were speeches about my father, his kindness and his accomplishments. My brother recited the Kaddish for him and repeated that each year. Now my son does it.