There were eighteen people in the two-room apartment of my aunt Rosa: the eight Bunin sisters, their eight children, Grandfather, who came later, and a distant relative of one of my aunts, who kept our household. We lived in harmony like that during the whole war, helping each other. All children went to school. That's all I remember about wartime.
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Displaying 10261 - 10290 of 50826 results
Larisa Gorelova
Starting from 1944, at the end of the war, my aunts began to receive invitations from their husbands and returned to Leningrad. In 1945 Mother was assigned to work in liberated areas, in the town of Brest [today Belarus], where she worked as head of the planning department of railroad restaurants until her retirement age in 1959.
In August 1944 I received an invitation from my uncle, came to Leningrad and in September entered the Ulyanov-Lenin Electrical Engineering Institute. That same year, after the siege of Leningrad was lifted, educational institutions started to work again and there were quite a lot of applicants. However, I passed easily. There were no expressions of anti- Semitism, the Great Patriotic War was on and people were united against the Germans, everybody forgot about the Jews both at common and political levels.
I witnessed the end of the Great Patriotic War in May 1945 in Leningrad. I was a witness to the return of Klodt's horses - the famous sculptures on Anichkov Bridge on Nevsky Prospekt, the main street in Leningrad. People, who survived the siege, very much despised those, who had been evacuated, regardless of where the person had escaped from the Germans, and where he/she came back from after the victory [31]; it was considered that all who returned were those who had fled from the siege. In stores and everywhere people spoke contemptuously about the evacuated.
jemma grinberg
In 1938 when the repressions against the most outstanding Party and Soviet activists was at its height, Yevsey was accused of not revealing the names of enemies of the people, which prevented their delivery to the Soviet punitive authorities. Although he was 1st secretary of the party's town committee, they didn't allow him to attend the meeting, and closed the door in his face. Yevsey, realizing that he was going to be arrested, came home and shot himself. The farewell message he wrote to his daughter Stella on a photograph in which he appeared with her, read, “Don't believe anything bad about me. Continue on the road to communism.” (Editor's Note: In the mid-1930s Stalin launched a major campaign of political terror. The purges, arrests, and deportations to labor camps touched virtually every family. Untold numbers of party, industrial, and military leaders disappeared during the “Great Terror”. Indeed, between 1934 and 1938 two-thirds of the members of the 1934 Central Committee were sentenced and executed.
Like many others who came from poor families, Yevsey was enthusiastic about the October Revolution. He became a member of the Bolshevik Party and fought against the White Guards during the Civil War of 1913-1918. Yevsey's Party nickname was “Elegin,” and this soon became his last name. He was an outstanding Party activist, and a high Party official. From the mid-1930s Yevsey was Head of the Belaya Tserkov Party Committee. Belaya Tserkov is a district town not far from Kiev.
The boys studied at cheder. My grandfather and grandmother spoke Yiddish and all the children knew Yiddish, Ukrainian and Polish – the languages of communication in the town. All of my grandparents' children got a primary education, and then each of them went his own way.
When their oldest son, Yevsey, who was born around 1898, finished grammar school, he did not want to follow in his father's steps to become a shoemaker. He was a very educated and intelligent boy. After grammar school he went to Simferopol to stay with distant relatives. I don't have any information about what he was doing there.
When their oldest son, Yevsey, who was born around 1898, finished grammar school, he did not want to follow in his father's steps to become a shoemaker. He was a very educated and intelligent boy. After grammar school he went to Simferopol to stay with distant relatives. I don't have any information about what he was doing there.
According to what my father's sister Rosa told us, my grandfather's family was religious. My grandfather and grandmother went to synagogue on holidays, and kept kosher. They celebrated the Sabbath and all the Jewish holidays: Pesach, YomKippur, Hanukkah, etc., but my father doesn't remember my grandmother and grandfather praying every day or fasting at all. They didn't force their children to pray or go to synagogue either, and almost all of them grew up as atheists.
My grandfather Leizer Grinberg was a shoemaker. The family was not very well off. They had six children they had to provide for. My grandmother, like all Jewish women of that time, was responsible for housekeeping.
I know that they came from the village of Radzivillovo, Ukraine, located at the border with Poland. I also know that there were a few Jewish families living in this town and that there was a synagogue. There were Poles as well as Jews living in the town. They got along well and helped each other.
I remember that some Uzbek men started asking to get engaged to my sister and me. They believed that at 12 and 14 we were quite ripe for marriage. We were invited to the suitors' home and we accepted the invitation in order to have something to eat. We were sitting at the table eating delicious cake, stuffing ourselves as much as we could to make the meal last longer, while contemplating with anxiety the redemption to be paid for the fiancée, if you take my meaning.
My mother told the men that she was not opposing our getting married, but had to wait until her husband came back from the war so that she could ask his permission. We found ourselves in this type of situation several times, until finally, Mother realized that we had to leave this village because the suitors came to understand that the only reason we had accepted their invitation was to be able to get a decent meal.
My mother told the men that she was not opposing our getting married, but had to wait until her husband came back from the war so that she could ask his permission. We found ourselves in this type of situation several times, until finally, Mother realized that we had to leave this village because the suitors came to understand that the only reason we had accepted their invitation was to be able to get a decent meal.
At first, when our trip began, we were all together on the train, with Fania and her son along with Nehama and her daughter, Regina. The railcars were overcrowded, and we had to take turns sleeping. The train was heading for the Urals. On the way, it was announced that we could also go to Tashkent. My mother decided that we should go somewhere where the climate was warm as we had no warm clothing with us, so our relatives went to Perm and we went to Tashkent. Perhaps it was a mistake, because we were alone there with no one to help us. We got off the train at night. Women and children mounted horse-driven carts and the rest were told to walk beside the carts. It was pouring rain and the horses got stuck in the clay and mud and couldn't pull the carts. We were told to get off the carts and walk. I shall never forget that terrible night, with our feet sinking in the clay and uncertainty ahead of us. Afterwards, I fell ill with a fever. My mother and I stayed in a small room so I could recover. After I got better, I went to work with the adults. We worked at the cotton plantation and as payment for our work received a bowl of balanda (some sort of soup made from whatever there was at hand). There was no bread, or any food at all. We were starving. My mother fell ill with tropical malaria and there were no medications to give her.
At the end of October my father finally took us to the Northern railway station in Moscow. Aunt Fania and her son from Turbin were already there. The railway station was so crowded that we had to wait six days until we could leave. On the 1st of October, 1941, my father had received a subpoena to appear at the recruitment office on a certain date. The night before he was to go, my mother told him to go and stay with our acquaintances in Moscow so he could get a good night's sleep. My father obeyed and went there. On that very night we managed to get on a train that was leaving. We couldn't even say “good-bye” to my father. And we never saw him again. He perished in December 1941 in the battle for Moscow.
Regina was panicking more than the others, and insisted on our evacuation. Our neighbors and we put our luggage on a cart and started moving east of town. After walking about 20 kilometers, we realized that we wouldn't make it, and returned.
We stayed in this village until the middle of October 1941. We heard rumors about what was going on in the occupied areas, and about Babiy Yar and the extermination of innocent Jewish people (Babi Yar is the site of the first mass shootings of the Jewish population that was done in the open by the Germans on September 29-30, 1941, in Kiev.
, Russia
There was no talk about fascism in our family, although our parents and we knew about fascism in Europe. I remember seeing “The Oppengeim family” film (a German film made in the 1930s about the life and destruction of a Jewish family in fascist Germany) that we watched shortly before the war. Even after we had seen this film we tried to avoid any discussions about the negative attitudes of fascists toward the Jews. I guess, we were trying to spare one another from disturbing emotions.
My parents weren't Party members, but they were real internationalists. When the war in Spain began and many Spanish children were taken to the Soviet Union, my mother, being so emotional, wanted to adopt a Spanish child. My sister Regina fell ill at that time and my mother regretted for many years that she couldn't adopt a Spanish child.
Although we knew that we were Jews, our parents tried to raise us without focusing on our ethnicity. Like any other children, we played the same games and didn't give a thought to who we were. We didn't know Yiddish, although our parents often spoke it. They didn't think it necessary to teach us Yiddish, or to tell us about the origin of the Jewish people, their history or religion. They also tried to suppress our interest in the Jewish issue, whenever we showed any. They realized that our life in the USSR would be easier if we were like everybody else. Just like any other Soviet children, we had no nationality or ethnicity. We celebrated only state holidays at home: the 1st of May, the October Revolution and the Commune of Paris days. My sister and I read a lot, attended events at literary and theatrical clubs, went in for sports, and loved volleyball. The celebration of any Jewish traditions or holidays was out of the question.
, Russia
In 1937 I went to school. My sister was in the 3rd grade at this same school. There were Jewish children as well as children of other nationalities in my class. I remember my first teacher. She was a very nice Russian woman named Maria Vassilievna. She gave us our first lessons on internationalism. Yemelianov, my classmate, called me “zhydovka” once, and she told him to leave the classroom. Maria Vassilievna wanted to have him expelled from the school, but since this was the only school in the village, there was no other place he could go. The administration hushed up the incident, and nobody ever called me names again.
We went to grandmother Riva's birthday celebration in Kiev and then to the village of Voronok, in the vicinity of Moscow. My father found a job as a German teacher for students in the senior classes, and my mother worked in the junior classes at the same and only Russian secondary village school. We received an apartment from the Department of Public Education. It was actually a 14 square meter room in a communal apartment, but we had our own dwelling for the first time. Our room was full of books. We lived there until the beginning of the war.
From 1935 we lived in Anapa, in the Caucasus. My sister was very sickly, and my parents were told to move to the seashore for a year. We rented a room there. Our landlady's name was Zhuk. I faced anti-Semitism there for the first time. The grown up son of our landlady called me and my sister “zhydovki” (kikes) whenever he saw us. Once, when we came back from the cinema we found our door lock covered in excrement. My father wasn't frightened, and sued our landlady's son for hooliganism. There was no law against ethnically based abuse at that time, but still the court sentenced Zhuk to one year in prison for hooliganism and anti-Semitism. After this court case, my father decided to leave Anapa, because this guy's friends were free and might have wanted to take revenge.
My parents didn't have an apartment until 1936, and they moved from one place to another. At first, my mother worked at the children's home for retarded children, but as soon as she got pregnant she quit that job. My older sister Regina was born in Kiev in 1927. I was born in Astrakhan, where my mother's younger sister Nelia and her husband Moisey were living. My first memories in life date from around 1933, when I was three years old and we lived in Sestroretsk near Leningrad. My mother was director of the children's home and my father worked in Leningrad. We had a nanny. Once, when she was not around, I decided to give medical treatment to one of my dolls, and put it very close to the stove. It started to burn, and so did I. I was on fire when my nanny came in. I spent several months in the hospital. Those are some of my earliest memories.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
My mother was a very progressive girl, and she “chose” a husband for herself, as she liked to joke. She was very much in love with her husband. She didn't hide her feelings and used to kiss and hug him in our presence. Only now have I come to understand how progressive her conduct was, considering that she was born into a provincial Jewish family. My father was very shy. He loved his wife dearly, but he was ashamed of her demonstrative emotions, especially when she expressed them in our presence.
, Ukraine
My mother, Hana (Anna) Deich, who was born in 1900, was the first among the children to get an education at the Frebelev Institute, from which she graduated with a diploma allowing her to work with retarded children. Since childhood she had always been eager to get an education. This was not typical of Jewish girls, who were traditionally supposed to dedicate themselves to family life. In the 1920s education was free, and all children from proletariat families were admitted to educational institutions. So my mother had no problem gaining entrance into the institute and getting an education.
His younger son, Lev, graduated from Kiev University and got married before the war. After the war he and his wife were lecturers at Kiev University. Lev lectured on history and his wife Sarra Frantsevna, a Jew, taught literature. In 1949 Lev and Sara were accused of cosmopolitism and fired. They moved to Perm. Lev defended his thesis on ancient history, and Sara defended her Ph.D. thesis on Russian literature in Perm. Lev died in 1989. Sara died some time later.
My grandmother Rivka lived with the family of her son Aron. She was very religious and, although Aron and his family didn't believe in God, they respected my grandmother's faith and created conditions that allowed her to pray, observe Jewish traditions, and celebrate holidays. I saw my grandmother only once in 1936 when the whole family got together in Kiev to celebrate her 70th birthday anniversary. We were staying with Uncle Aron's family. I remember that when it was time for my grandmother's morning prayer she was to be left alone in the room. My older sister Regina was a self-willed girl and refused to leave the room. She told me later that she saw her grandmother reading her prayer from her prayer book.
My grandfather Shloime was shot by bandits during the civil war (In the 1920s there were many anti-Semitic gangs in Ukraine. They killed Jews, robbed and burnt their houses, raped women and killed children.) The Bolsheviks expropriated his pharmacy and the family had to split, in order to find work and accommodation.
, Ukraine
In 1925, my mother, Anna Deich, who, I would say, was an emancipated girl, saw a photo of my father while she was visiting his sister Rosa, her friend. Mother liked him a lot and wrote him a letter enclosing her address. They corresponded with one another through letters for a whole year before they met. Then, when they finally did meet, they fell in love with each other. In 1925 my father was arrested for some reason and was imprisoned for a few months. When he was released, my parents realized that they couldn't live without each other and got married. I mean, they just began to live together, because civil registration was considered to be a vestige of the past.
My father Moisey Grinberg was born in 1903. After he finished his studies at cheder and then a Jewish primary school, he worked for some time in his father's shop, helping him repair shoes. In the early 1920s my father attended a trade union activist's school and for some time was involved in trade union activities. My father did not receive any special education, but he took a number of different courses and attended several workshops. He studied German and got a job as a German teacher at a school.
His family settled down in the village of Turbino, near Moscow, where Timofei worked as a Geography teacher at the local school. He became very nervous when he was not recruited during the first days of the war. He feared that the authorities did not believe he could be trusted to defend his Motherland. He even had a nervous breakdown. Then he was recruited into the Red Army and went through the war without one single wound.