Rosa perished in Babi Yar [2] in 1941. Our distant non-Jewish acquaintance took Rosa there by her hand. She bought her a loaf of bread and butter for the road and accompanied her without knowing that Rosa was destined to die there. She told us later how she died.
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Major events (political and historical)
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Displaying 6511 - 6540 of 50826 results
Tsylia Aguf
My father's youngest sister, Rosa Pekar, was born in the early 1910s. She was born blind. She was short and pretty. She had wide-open blue eyes, and one couldn't tell that she was blind. She finished Russian secondary school in Korostyshev and graduated from the Pedagogical Institute in Kiev. She studied at the Postgraduate Philosophy Faculty. She read special books for blind people.
My father's second sister, Sarah Pekar, was born in Korostyshev in the late 1900s. She got married and moved to Zhytomir [150 km from Kiev]. There were many wealthy Jews in town at the time. There were a few synagogues, a Jewish hospital and Jewish stores. Jews were craftsmen and merchants. There were a few Jewish schools and a yeshivah in Zhytomir.
My father's brother, Ilia Pekar, was born in Korostyshev in the middle of the 1900s. He finished cheder, Jewish grammar school and an accounting school in Kiev. He worked as an accountant in an office in Kiev. He was married but had no children.
My father's sister, Rachel Pekar, was born in Korostyshev in the early 1900s. She finished a Jewish grammar school there. After 1917 she lived in the town of Gostomel [20 km from Kiev]. There were only a few Jewish families in Gostomel. Rachel was a laborer at the Factory of Musical Instruments. She remained single. She perished in 1941 when the Germans occupied Gostomel.
In the early 1990s the USSR disintegrated. The Communist Party was dissolved. Neither my husband nor I were members of the Communist Party. We despised party activists because we believed that no talented person could get involved with party activities. I was very enthusiastic about the changes. It brought freedom of speech. One could speak his mind without fearing to be arrested for telling an anecdote that might be out of place. Even though the standards of living sank in the 1990s and prices went up, I wouldn't like the Soviet power to return.
However, I felt sorry about the disintegration of the Soviet Union. It's annoying that we are considered to be citizens of different countries when going to Russia to visit friends. Take the crossing of the border, for instance, where customs officers check your luggage looking for pieces of sausage or pork fat because there is a ban on taking food products out of Ukraine. That's something we are not used to, and I find it humiliating. I don't travel, but my children and friends face this problem.
I was very enthusiastic about the restoration of Jewish life in the 1990s. I take part in many activities. I worked as volunteer with Hesed for a long time. I'm one of the most active members of the intellectual club in Hesed and attend the Sholem Aleichem [12] Association in Kiev. Besides, I like to attend concerts and performances. I read Jewish newspapers published in Ukraine. I'm not leaving my country for Israel or any other place. My children and grandchildren want to stay here, and I cannot and do not want to live in another country.
However, I felt sorry about the disintegration of the Soviet Union. It's annoying that we are considered to be citizens of different countries when going to Russia to visit friends. Take the crossing of the border, for instance, where customs officers check your luggage looking for pieces of sausage or pork fat because there is a ban on taking food products out of Ukraine. That's something we are not used to, and I find it humiliating. I don't travel, but my children and friends face this problem.
I was very enthusiastic about the restoration of Jewish life in the 1990s. I take part in many activities. I worked as volunteer with Hesed for a long time. I'm one of the most active members of the intellectual club in Hesed and attend the Sholem Aleichem [12] Association in Kiev. Besides, I like to attend concerts and performances. I read Jewish newspapers published in Ukraine. I'm not leaving my country for Israel or any other place. My children and grandchildren want to stay here, and I cannot and do not want to live in another country.
, Ukraine
Our son, Boris, followed into his father's footsteps. After finishing school in 1974 he entered the Faculty of Architecture at the Kiev Art Institute and graduated from it with success. He married a very nice, though non-Jewish, girl. They have a daughter, Elena. She is a 4th year student at the Kiev Art Academy. They don't observe any Jewish traditions.
My mother died in Kuibyshev in 1971. She was a receptionist at the local polyclinic. I went to her funeral.
My sister, Manya, finished a secondary school in Kuibyshev and graduated from the Medical Institute in Novosibirsk. She got married and had a daughter, Tatiana. She was a doctor at a hospital in Novosibirsk. Manya's husband died in a train accident in the 1970s. Manya and her daughter moved to Israel in the 1990s. We correspond with them.
My younger sister, Asia, got married when she was 16. She had a daughter, Ludmila. Asia finished the Medical School in Kuibyshev and worked as a medical nurse at the local hospital. She is retired and lives in Kuibyshev now. She is divorced. Her husband left Asia for another woman.
My husband died in 1986. He was an outstanding architect and wrote many books on architecture. He died when he was working on his doctor's thesis. I married my old acquaintance, Leon Rubashevskiy, in 1992. His wife had died and he felt very lonely. We decided to live together. My second husband died in 2001. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Kiev.
My mother died in Kuibyshev in 1971. She was a receptionist at the local polyclinic. I went to her funeral.
My sister, Manya, finished a secondary school in Kuibyshev and graduated from the Medical Institute in Novosibirsk. She got married and had a daughter, Tatiana. She was a doctor at a hospital in Novosibirsk. Manya's husband died in a train accident in the 1970s. Manya and her daughter moved to Israel in the 1990s. We correspond with them.
My younger sister, Asia, got married when she was 16. She had a daughter, Ludmila. Asia finished the Medical School in Kuibyshev and worked as a medical nurse at the local hospital. She is retired and lives in Kuibyshev now. She is divorced. Her husband left Asia for another woman.
My husband died in 1986. He was an outstanding architect and wrote many books on architecture. He died when he was working on his doctor's thesis. I married my old acquaintance, Leon Rubashevskiy, in 1992. His wife had died and he felt very lonely. We decided to live together. My second husband died in 2001. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Kiev.
, Ukraine
In the 1970s, when large numbers of Jews were leaving the country, my husband and I firmly decided to stay. We both enjoyed work. My husband wrote books on architecture and defended his thesis. Our daughter wanted to move, though. It was her dream to travel to Cyprus and Greece, and moving to Israel seemed to bring her a step closer to have her dream come true. Well, she got married in 1974 and a year later her son Michael was born, so she dropped the idea of moving to Israel. Victoria married a Jew named Zaretskiy, but she divorced him in 1976. I retired in 1975 to help my daughter look after her son. My grandson, Michael, graduated from the Kiev Medical Institute and works as a medical expert at the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs.
, Ukraine
Victoria got a job at the Arsenal plant [a big military plant in Kiev that specialized in the production of optical devices]. After working at the plant for several years, she entered the Moscow Aviation Institute, where she studied by correspondence. She graduated as an optical tools specialist. She began to work at the design office of the same plant.
, Ukraine
Lazar Gurfinkel
When Bessarabia joined Romania in 1918, Isaac stayed in Kishinev but lost his position as chief surgeon. Jews weren't allowed to hold high official posts. He became a private doctor. Isaac had three daughters from his first wife.
After finishing grammar school my father finished a course for pharmacist assistants in Kazan. He wanted to get higher education, but it was difficult for a Jew to enter university [because of the five percent restriction] 5. My father's older brother, Isaac, helped him to get into Moscow University. The Association of Noble Families of Kishinev issued a request to the rector's office of Moscow University to admit Michael Gurfinkel, pointing out that his brother had contributed a lot to the Russian Empire. This document was signed by the marshal of the nobility in the province and a gentleman of the monarch's chamber. My father went to Moscow with this paper and obtained a permit to take entrance exams.
My father couldn't find a job in Khotin after graduating. There were only two pharmacies in town and no vacancies. He found a job at a private pharmacy in Tambov, a Russian provincial town. Later he worked in Fastov, near Kiev, for several years. When the owner of one of the pharmacies in Khotin died, his widow inherited the pharmacy. She had no special education and was looking for a manager. My father's sisters wrote to my father and told him to come to Khotin. He arrived and became the manager of that pharmacy.
My mother and Feiga's children studied at home with a teacher who came to teach them Hebrew, Yiddish and the Torah. Another teacher came to teach them the educational program of elementary school. At the age of 10 my mother went to grammar school in Kamenets-Podolsk, not far from Khotin. She lived in the hostel on weekdays and went to Khotin on weekends. My mother spoke fluent Russian and read a lot of Russian books.
My mother was a friend of my father's sister Fania. Fania introduced her to my father sometime in 1911. My mother was very beautiful. My father and mother liked one another and got married shortly afterwards in 1912. They had a civil ceremony in the town hall and a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah. They rented a big hall for ceremonies in Khotin and had the chuppah and the wedding party in that hall. After their wedding my parents spent their honeymoon in Italy.
Romanian was the state language in Bessarabia from 1918, but Jews mostly spoke Yiddish or Russian. We spoke Russian at home. Sometimes my parents spoke Yiddish when they didn't want us to understand what they were discussing. We had a Ukrainian nanny. She was kind to me, and I was attached to her. I learned Ukrainian from her and Russian from my parents. I actually spoke a mixture of these two languages. I learned Yiddish when I was about 5 years old from the children I was playing with. We lived in a Jewish neighborhood, and all our neighbors were Jewish. I couldn't read or write in Yiddish, but I spoke it fluently.
We lived in that house until World War II. There was a backyard, a shed and a well in the yard. The pharmacy occupied three rooms, the biggest of which served as the sales area. Powders were prepared in another room, and tinctures and decoctions were made in the third room. There were also storerooms for pharmaceutical utensils. Our family was lodging in four rooms: a living room, a dining room, my parents' bedroom and a children's room. There were also a kitchen, a verandah and a few storerooms in the house. When I was small I slept in my parents' bedroom. Later, me and Mmy brother and sister shared the children's room. There were two beds, a wardrobe, a sink, a table, two chairs and a bookcase in the room. We dined and received guests in the dining room. There was a table, six chairs, a cupboard and a sofa in the room. Our living room was beautifully furnished. There were four windows, carpets and curtains on the windows. There were pictures on the walls, ancient vases and a crystal chandelier.
My nanny died when I was about 6 years old. We also had a housemaid and a cook. They were Ukrainian. The housemaid was responsible for cleaning the rooms. She had to clean seven rooms every day. In winter she had to stoke the stove and clean it. The cook did the shopping and cooking every day because there were no fridges to store food.
My parents didn't follow the kashrut. We ate all kinds of products, including traditional Jewish food.
We didn't observe Sabbath, but we celebrated the major Jewish holidays: Pesach, Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, Chanukkah, Purim and Sukkot. My parents weren't deeply religious people, but they paid a tribute to religion.
Before my brother was to have his bar mitzvah my father hired a teacher to teach my brother Jewish traditions and religion. He taught him Hebrew, prayers and other things. My father hired a teacher for me when I was 10 years old. He taught me Hebrew but translated things into Yiddish for me to understand. I studied the Pentateuch Torah and the Talmud. When I turned 13 my father took me to the synagogue in a cabriolet. I had my bar mitzvah ritual. I said a prayer, and my father treated all community members with traditional vodka, wine and honey cookies. I got tefillin and came of age. My mother arranged a party for me at home. We invited many guests: our family, my parents' friends and my friends.
My father went to the synagogue on all big Jewish holidays and on the death anniversaries [Jahrzeit] of his parents to say prayers for them. He took me with him after I turned 7. While my brother was still in Khotin we went there together. My father had a seat at the synagogue. This synagogue had a special meaning to our family. My father's grandfather on his mother's side had funded its construction, and it was called after my great-grandfather, Avrum Shai Yoffe. My father also made contributions to charity and the maintenance of the synagogue. He had a seat of honor in the eastern part of the synagogue as the grandson of the man who had constructed the synagogue. The Holy Ark, where the Torah scrolls are kept, and the place where the cantor sings or says prayers are traditionally located in the eastern part of a synagogue. All believers must face the East during praying because our religious capital Jerusalem is in the East. There were benches along the eastern wall of the synagogue for the citizens who had contributed their lives to the Jewish community and the synagogue. On Saturdays, when my father wasn't at the synagogue, somebody else took his seat, but it was his on Jewish holidays when he attended the synagogue. I usually sat beside him. My mother attended a different synagogue, the one that her deceased father had attended. She went there on holidays.
My mother knew all the traditions. She kept fancy dishes and utensils for Pesach in a special box. She made traditional food on Pesach. Our cook helped her with the cooking. We didn't have any bread in the house during Pesach but ate matzah instead. All Jewish bakeries in Khotin sold matzah. Before Pesach the rabbi went to all the Jewish bakeries to issue a certificate confirming that they had cleaned the bakery of all the bread and bread crumbs. They made matzah flour for sale, too. We had gefilte fish, chicken broth and boiled chicken on Pesach. My mother also made chicken cutlets, stuffed chicken neck and pudding of matzah and eggs. There were also delicious pancakes from matzah meal that we ate with jam or honey. My father conducted the seder very ceremoniously. He had several prayer books. I also had a few of those books. I still have one that my parents gave me before the war. During seder I asked my father the traditional 'four questions' [the mah nishtanah]. Each member of the family drank a glass of wine. We opened the front door. It was a tradition that any traveler that didn't get home could enter the house and join the family for seder. There was also an extra glass of wine for Elijah the Prophet. It was believed that he visited every family at seder.
On Chanukkah our father gave us some change and a spinning top [dreidel]. I also remember Tu bi-Shevat. We had various fruit growing in Israel: dates, figs and raisins. We could buy them in stores and had them on the table.
We had guests for Purim. Poorer Jews, adults and children, gave performances in the houses of wealthier people and received money for them. These performances were short, because Purimshpilers had to make the rounds of as many families as possible to earn more money. It's obligatory to partake a festive meal on the day of Purim. It is customary to eat food with seeds, for example, hamantashen with poppy seed filling. One should drink more wine than one is accustomed to. It's correct to invite guests, especially the needy. The conversation should be focused on words from the Torah.
On Yom Kippur and before Rosh Hashanah we fasted for 24 hours including children over 5 years of age. After going to the synagogue [on the day of Yom Kippur], when the first evening star appeared in the sky, the family sat down for a festive dinner.
Neither my brother nor I went to cheder or a Jewish school. There were two Jewish schools in Khotin: a private one and a state-funded one. According to the Rumanian constitution the children of ethnic minorities could study at a national school. In the state-funded school pupils studied in Yiddish and Romanian. The other school was a Talmud-Torah, a religious school where children studied the Torah and Hebrew. It was funded by the Jewish community and Jewish organizations. According to the Romanian constitution the children of ethnic minorities could study at a national school. We studied at the Romanian elementary school. My father wanted us to continue our education and believed that we would be better off if we started our studies in Romanian. Our primary education was free of charge, but when we went to grammar school our parents paid a set amount for each year. Students wore uniforms. Poor people couldn't afford to pay for their education, but for the middle class it was affordable. My brother and sister went to a lyceum after elementary school. After that they entered the Pharmaceutical Faculty of Bucharest University. They both wanted to follow into my father's footsteps.
I went to the state elementary school when I turned 7. I faced anti- Semitism from the first days of school. There were only two Jewish pupils among the 40 of us in class. There were Romanian, Russian and Ukrainian pupils. They called me 'zhyd, zhydiura' [kike]. Sometimes I fought with them, sometimes I kept silent. Our teachers didn't encourage anti-Semitism and didn't demonstrate any. After finishing elementary school I went to the Romanian grammar school.
In 1933 Hitler came to power in Germany. Romania was a military and political ally of France and England that won in World War I. Under the Versailles Peace Treaty Romania received Bessarabia and Bukovina at that time. We believed that Romania wouldn't enter a treaty with Germany. We were hoping that France and England wouldn't allow Germany to occupy Romania, but it happened otherwise. There were fascist organizations in Romania. Two parties the Iron Guard 6 and the Cuzists 7, openly declared that they were against Jews. They were saying that Jews were robbing the Romanians and took hold of all key positions in trade and economy. But they weren't in power. The Liberal Party was in power, and it was loyal to Jews. There was no oppression of Jews. Only officers' schools and seminaries didn't admit Jews.
My brother became the manager of the pharmacy. The pharmacy generated a good income, and my mother didn't have to worry about how to support the family.
We read about the situation in the USSR in a daily Russian newspaper issued by Russian emigrants. What we read there made us feel scared: continuous trials over 'enemies of the people', former revolutionaries and communists [during the so-called Great Terror]. The middle class had a very negative view of the situation in the USSR.