Grandfather Alter had a house, an old wooden one, rather stocky, but a house of his own. When he married my grandmother, he rented some land and was engaged in vegetable growing. They had, though not always, a horse, a cow and geese. In 1912 he bought out the land, about two hectares and continued to do vegetable gardening together with his daughters. All their family worked on the land and an average income was ensured. Their own land gave them food and saved them from starvation. They didn't have food in abundance, but they had enough: the staple food was bread, potatoes, vegetables, curdled milk, a piece of meat. They also had butter, eggs, chicken, white bread and sausage for holidays.
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Displaying 10231 - 10260 of 50826 results
Larisa Gorelova
My grandparents' family belonged to the class of the petty bourgeoisie. Their family had no money, only debts. But the neighbors for some reason despised my grandparents, believing them to be rich. They didn't let them live quietly and composed denunciations against them. As a result Grandfather was expelled from the kolkhoz [8] and he kept his own household: cattle, geese, chicken and a vegetable garden. Since he was deprived of his right to vote, one of his daughters was expelled from the Party, of which she was a devoted member, and another one was expelled from university.
Grandfather was the favorite of the whole family and of his eight daughters; he spent a lot of strength and energy on their education. Berta, my mother, was the first to enter a gymnasium [high school]. Grandfather didn't agree to it at first, he thought that there wasn't enough funds for the education of all his daughters, and that it was unfair to give education only to one. However, Grandmother insisted and all their daughters obtained education at a gymnasium and at schools after the Revolution [9]; later all obtained university education. Grandfather understood the benefit of education and was pleased with his daughters' success at gymnasium and when they graduated from university.
During the Soviet time, in 1929, Grandfather was dispossessed as a kulak [10] He worked in a kolkhoz and was dismissed from it as a kulak.
After graduation Georgy was assigned to party work in the Caucasus. At first he was a political department head, then he was transferred to the position of First Secretary at the district committee of the Communist Party in a small town. In 1937 he was arrested and in 1938 executed by shooting [11]. At that time arrests of people, who held high party positions, were very frequent. Usually they were groundlessly accused of anti-Soviet activity. In 1937 Lyubov was also arrested; she worked as a teacher of Russian at that time. They had two sons, born in 1929 and 1934. When she was being driven in the mountains in an open truck to the prison, she managed to tear off a piece of her shirt and write a note, asking to help her children. That note fell into good hands and was sent to the right address in the town, where they lived. Kind people took her children to her sisters in Leningrad. She was in prison until 1939, but the court wasn't able to accuse her of anything, so she was released as there had been no crime committed.
When the war broke out and the Germans approached the Caucasus, she tried to get to the railroad on some cart, in order to get to Russia. The husband of one of her sisters, Boris, helped her. He brought her to the train and sent her to evacuation to Kyrgyzstan, where all our family lived already.
Her husband, Meyer Bogin, a Jew, worked as an engineer and was repressed in 1937: he was accused of 'anti-Soviet activity,' as was the custom in those days, and executed by shooting in 1938.
In the same year she married Solomon Kaplan, who graduated from the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute. He worked as an engineer all his life at various civil plants. He stayed in Leningrad during the blockade [14] and survived.
The fifth daughter of my grandparents, Reizl, born in 1909, was the most beautiful in the family. She united all sisters around herself. After finishing school she graduated from the Medical Institute. She got married while at university. Her husband, David, perished during the siege of Leningrad.
She married Boris Epstein, a Jew, a communication engineer. Boris was a Soviet Army officer, a communication engineer, during the Great Patriotic War and stayed in Leningrad during the siege, but left for business: he laid the line along Ladoga Lake, where the Life Road [15] lay; he also laid the communication line under Volga during the Stalingrad battle [16], and he finished the war in Germany.
Her husband, Naum Fruman, born in 1915, was her fellow-student, but as an undergraduate, he was taken to the Navy Academy, from where he graduated as a navy officer in the field of shooting directing equipment. Right after graduation from the academy he was assigned to work in Tallinn. When the Great Patriotic War broke out, they managed to leave Estonia for Kronstadt with the last ship. Their ship was bombed en route and they were picked up by a Soviet ship which headed for the island. Thus they reached Kronstadt. After that Naum worked at the Artillery Administration during the war and was transferred after the war to Kronstadt as a chief engineer for the Repair plant, where he worked until the Doctors' Plot [17] started in 1953. In 1953 he was slandered in connection with the Doctors' Plot, demobilized and fired from the Kronstadt plant. He came to Leningrad and couldn't find a job for a rather long time.
My mother, Beilya [Berta] Bunina, was born in 1902 in the town of Slutsk in Belarus. She was the second daughter in the family and helped her parents with the household and in the vegetable garden. She was Grandmother's right hand and helped to look after the younger children. She read a lot and was well-educated. She was the first to pave the way to education before the Revolution, as she decided to study in a gymnasium, not in cheder. Grandmother, unlike Grandfather, understood the necessity of her daughters' education, supported my mother and Mother finished a gymnasium in Slutsk. After that she moved to Minsk and entered the Minsk Public University, the Faculty of Economics, and graduated in 1925.
She married my father, Ber Oliker, who had graduated from the Medical Institute in Minsk and worked as a surgeon. I don't know exactly how my parents met, but I know that they didn't celebrate their wedding, they just registered their marriage; it was a custom to do so in big cities. Mother found a job as an economist-planner at Gosplan [state economic planning institution] of Belarus.
My father, Ber Oliker, was born in 1901 in the town of Rogachev in Belarus. He was the youngest in his family and at the age of 13 became an apprentice at a private tailor shop. Difficult working conditions very soon destroyed his health and he had to leave the shop and become an apprentice at a private textiles store. In 1917, as a 16-year-old young man, he began to participate in the Revolutionary movement in Minsk. In 1918 during the Civil War, when Minsk was occupied by the Germans, he got acquainted with the members of an underground Bolshevik [18] committee. Thus he got to know the Party Charter of the Bolshevik Party and he was explained the objectives and tasks of the Bolshevik Party. Soon he began to receive minor assignments from the underground committee; in particular, he was assigned to conduct the work among the working youth regarding international education in accordance with the Bolshevik Party Charter.
After Minsk was liberated from the German occupation, in December 1918 he was selected to the organizational three [19] according to the convocation of the First Meeting of Working Youth for the purpose of organization and registration of the Komsomol organization in Minsk. He was elected member of the First Committee of the Minsk Komsomol Organization, among others, at the first organizational meeting of the working youth in December 1918. He joined the Red Army forces among one of the first Komsomol members, was enlisted to the Fourth Komsomol Company of the Minsk Guard regiment and fought against the White Guard [20] members to defend our native Minsk.
During the White-Polish occupation [21] of Belarus and Minsk, Father, among other Komsomol members, was left in Minsk to conduct underground work. They assisted the underground Party Committee in setting up the underground Komsomol organization and very often, risking their lives, performed important tasks of the underground Party Committee. The underground Party Committee and the underground Komsomol leaders were arrested by the White- Polish gendarmerie. After the arrest of the first underground Komsomol Committee, Father was elected Chairman of the Minsk underground Komsomol Committee.
During the White-Polish occupation [21] of Belarus and Minsk, Father, among other Komsomol members, was left in Minsk to conduct underground work. They assisted the underground Party Committee in setting up the underground Komsomol organization and very often, risking their lives, performed important tasks of the underground Party Committee. The underground Party Committee and the underground Komsomol leaders were arrested by the White- Polish gendarmerie. After the arrest of the first underground Komsomol Committee, Father was elected Chairman of the Minsk underground Komsomol Committee.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
At the beginning of April 1920 the White-Polish gendarmerie arrested him and other members of the underground Komsomol Committee. He was interrogated, tortured and tormented in the torture cell. Five of his front teeth were knocked out. As a result of torture he had to undergo two operations later, lost his hearing in his right ear and remained disabled for the rest of his life. He was court-martialed as the leader of the underground Komsomol Committee, and the court was supposed to pass a death sentence, but owing to the violent attack of the Red Army the court didn't manage to complete the trial. Father was awarded the Order of the Labor Red Standard of the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic for his active work during the Civil War against the White-Poles. He was the delegate of the III Congress of the Workers' and Peasants' Young League, where Vladimir Ilyich Lenin gave his famous historical speech about the tasks of the Young Communist League. After the Civil War Father finished the workers' faculty [22], after that he graduated from the Medical Institute and he became a surgeon and later the Deputy People's Commissar of Public Health of Belarus.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
We had an intellectual Soviet family: my parents had university education and worked in their professional field; Father was a public party activist - unfortunately I was too small at that time to take interest in it, and later my father didn't tell me about it, so I can't give you more details - religion was out of the question [23].
In fall 1935 an exchange of documents was commenced in the Communist Party, connected with the beginning purge. Mass arrests and expulsions from the Party began. The incidence of these arrests couldn't but put Father on his guard, as he recalled that in 1932 Stalin's letter was published in the 'Proletarian Revolution' magazine about the Party's history falsification. In connection with Stalin's letter all historical books about the Party's history, which had been published before, were called into question. There was no literature in Belarus at that time about the history of the Party and Komsomol, there was only one book about the history of the Komsomol, and my father was one of its authors. Father knew that in case of absence of any other literature the book about the history of the Belarusian Komsomol would be the only target and he wasn't mistaken. On 29th April 1936 Father was arrested and forwarded to the Minsk prison. After that, within 15 months the investigation was carried out. As a result, he was dispatched to the Moscow court in Lefortovo [a district of Moscow], where within twelve minutes his sentence was announced to him - ten years of prison plus five years of deprivation of rights. Father expected that he would be sentenced to death and was even glad that he got a different verdict. From that moment years of wandering in prisons and exiles began.
Father's first prison was the Vologda prison. His second halting point was the Solovetsky monastery. Father stayed for two years in Solovetsky monastery without any work, without communication, without walks. He was allowed only to use the prison library. He read mainly medical literature. Once he was very much carried away with the 'History of Surgery' and he crossed his legs and leaned his elbow on his knee. The guard, who watched him through the crack in the door, entered the cell, hit him and sent him to the punishment cell. This continued until 1939.
In June 1939 some doctors, who worked in the sanitary department of the prison, were mobilized and it was decided to replace them with the imprisoned doctors. Thus Father was engaged in medical practice. In fall 1939 all prisoners were removed from the Solovetsky prison. After the Solovetsky islands he spent his camp life in Karelia, in Archangelsk region and Vorkuta region [north of Russia].
In June 1939 some doctors, who worked in the sanitary department of the prison, were mobilized and it was decided to replace them with the imprisoned doctors. Thus Father was engaged in medical practice. In fall 1939 all prisoners were removed from the Solovetsky prison. After the Solovetsky islands he spent his camp life in Karelia, in Archangelsk region and Vorkuta region [north of Russia].
During the Great Patriotic War he worked as a doctor in the town of Medvezhegorsk, constantly asking to be let to the frontline, but, of course, his request wasn't satisfied. He lived like that until 1947.
In 1950, 14 years after his first arrest and three years after his release, he was arrested for the second time by the bodies of the State Security Committee [24] in Kyrgyzstan and dispatched to the Krasnoyarsk territory, where after long waiting he was appointed as doctor to a village in Yenisey. After two years of exile, in 1952, Father was fired in connection with the beginning of the Doctors' Plot in Moscow and for three months he was waiting for his third arrest. Later the State Security Committee in Kyrgyzstan dispatched him to the Far North to Taymyr National District, where he worked until Stalin's death in 1953.
In December 1954 Father obtained a passport and felt himself to be a free man. He made up his mind to take the most extreme measures and began to write letters to the Communist Party Central Committee and to the Administration of the State Security Committee about his unfair imprisonment. In April 1956, two months after the Twentieth Party Congress [25], Father was rehabilitated [26] by the resolution of the Supreme Court of the USSR. He was allowed to move to Kyrgyzstan from the Far North, where he was rehabilitated in the Party and assigned to work in Minsk, Belarus, upon his own request. He worked in Minsk until 1967, at the Scientific Research Institute of Sanitary Hygiene as a doctor-research officer and wrote and published several scientific works.
When perestroika [27] started, in 1989 during the period of complete rehabilitation of the Gulag prisoners, the Military Board of the Supreme Court of the USSR informed me with a letter that my father had been groundlessly accused of having been a member of the counterrevolutionary trotskist [28] terrorist group in Minsk since 1935. Father didn't plead guilty during the preliminary investigation and in the judicial sitting.
I was placed in a kindergarten early, because my parents had to work and they didn't hire any nannies or maids. Later I went to a Soviet high school, and in summer I stayed at children's summer camps [29] in the suburbs of Minsk. We also spent Mother's vacation in Leningrad, at her sisters' place.
I don't remember my childhood very well, my strongest impression was when I was nine, Father was put into prison and I became the daughter of an 'enemy of the people' [30]. I still remember the feeling when everybody turned away from me, all neighbors, my classmates, my teachers. The mass repressions hadn't started yet at that time, and all actions of the authorities were accepted by the nation unconditionally. I have no friends left from my childhood; I made real friends only after the Great Patriotic War, as a student in Leningrad.
At the end of April 1936 my father was arrested based on a denunciation. After that Mother, having become a wife of an 'enemy of the people,' was left without a job with two children. However, with difficulty, afraid of persecutions, she managed to find a job as an economist at the bread-baking plant and worked there as an economist-planner until the Great Patriotic War broke out.
On the day the war was announced, 22nd June 1941, my younger brother Ernst stayed near Minsk at the summer camp of his kindergarten. Mother went to visit him, but being intimidated by repressions and persecutions, was afraid to bring him to the city. Only two days after the war had been announced, when we had to escape from Minsk, we left without my brother. He remained at the summer camp for several days, but the kindergarten director managed to load the kids onto some passing train and take them to Volga, where Mother's sister found him and later brought him to Kyrgyzstan, where we stayed in evacuation. My mother and I didn't spend a night at home since the war had been announced; we stayed every day in the bomb-shelter.
On 24th June when the town was on fire and many people left the bomb- shelter for the forest, Mother, Grandfather, Aunt Maria with her son and I also decided to leave with everybody. We walked for ten days under the bombs, accompanied by the planes' droning. We weren't let into any village, because the Germans spread leaflets, which said that those who give shelter to Jews would be shot. So we slept in ditches at night, covering ourselves with old coats. We didn't have any belongings. Soon we reached Mogilev, 200 kilometers east of Minsk, which was already empty, full of military people, since the Germans were approaching. The officers gave us food and showed us where the railroad station was, which still had a train with refugees. We managed to get onto the last train, leaving Mogilev. At first we were bombed on our way, but later we passed peaceful territory and soon came to the village of Zavoronezh in Tambov region and settled in an empty village house. We wrote letters to all our relatives in Leningrad, Kyrgyzstan and in the Caucasus, saying that we were alive and needed assistance.
By that time, in the summer of 1941 Mother's sister Rosa and her husband worked in Kyrgyzstan after graduation from the First Medical Institute. They immediately sent us some money and an invitation to come to their place, Bishkek station. Since Grandfather was old and sick, we were afraid to take him with us in such hot weather, so I went together with Mother and left Grandfather in that house in Zavoronezh. After long transfers on different trains we came to Bishkek, to Aunt Rosa and her second husband, Nikolai Amurov. Mother immediately found a job as an economist at the railroad, but from the very first minute understood that she couldn't allow herself to be intimidated as the wife of an 'enemy of the people,' so she wrote in the questionnaire that she had been a widow since 1936. Mother worked as an economist-planner during the evacuation at the Railroad Administration in Kyrgyzstan.
All husbands of my mother's sisters served in the army and stayed in besieged Leningrad during the blockade. Only Aunt Hanna's husband, Solomon Kaplan, was a civil engineer and worked at a plant during the blockade.