My parents were religious. On holidays they went to the synagogue on the corner of Staroportofrankovskaya and Novorybnaya Streets. This synagogue was ruined during the Great Patriotic War. There were few other synagogues in Odessa. I attended the synagogue with my parents when I was 10-12 years old, but I don’t remember any details. I remember that my father liked listening to a good cantor.
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Displaying 37411 - 37440 of 50826 results
Semyon Tilipman
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My parents spoke Yiddish and I could understand Yiddish well.
They observed Sabbath. I remember my mother lighting candles. I don’t know whether my father worked on Saturday. I just don’t remember. I didn’t care. My mother made Gefilte fish and matzah dishes at Pesach: pudding and pancakes. My father and I liked goose fat cracklings. My mother put a bowl of cracklings on the table for us to ‘satisfy our eyes’ hunger’. I remember what she said: ‘When you want to give someone food to eat to his heart’s content give him a lot of food and his appetite would be half less’. I also remember Chanukkah and dreidel and we got Chanukkah gelt. My mother went to buy food at the Privoz: fish, poultry, vegetables and fruit. I also remember that mother bought live chickens and took them to a shochet. There was a shochet at Privoz for a long time after the Great Patriotic War.
My father had to fight to make his living. He was a vendor, but he didn’t quite like it and in the 1920s he went to work as a binder at the ‘Chermorskaya Communa’ publishing office. Since his salary was not enough to support the family, he additionally made elastic bands, leather wristlets and shoelaces. Actually such small craftsmen preferred to unite into teams to be able to purchase necessary equipment and materials. My father treated leather in the attic. I helped my father as much as I could with operating his weaving equipment or, wristlet and elastic band making units. Or I fixed shoelace tips with a special device. I don’t remember how these goods were sold, I guess there was someone whom I didn’t know.
I finished the 7 years school in 1930. To continue my education I needed to get some work experience. It was difficult to find a job. There was an employment agency in a lane in Grecheskaya square. There were long lines of people near this agency and I remember how my friends and I stayed overnight near the sculptures of two lions in Deribassovskaya Street waiting for our turn to get inside the agency. I obtained a recommendation to a vocational school at Odessa cinema factory: this was how Odessa cinema studio was called at the time. I studied at school three years and worked as an electrician at the studio.
I joined Komsomol 7 at vocational school, but I never took an active part in it. All I can remember is that I attended Komsomol meetings. At that time communists and party leaders used to report to people on their activities and Komsomol members were to attend Party meetings where they reviewed Party activities in detail.
In the 1930s Torgsin stores 8 were open in Odessa selling food products for gold and foreign currency. At the same time people were not allowed to deal with foreign currency in private. They were arrested and persecuted for foreign currency operations. My father was doing better at his work and decided to buy few dollars to keep them as savings. He bound then in carton. Our kitchen door led to the attic of an adjoining house. There was carton in place of glass in this door and my father kept his dollars in this carton. The person who sold these dollars to my father reported on him. He stayed in prison 24 hours. He never told us what they did to him there. NKVD 9 employees convoyed him home and he showed them his hiding place. They took away my father’s dollars. This was called in Odessa the ‘gold fever’ and took place in 1932–1933s. Many people were arrested on false charges.
Yuzef Chizhyk and I entered short-term communication course in the Odessa Communications College. I finished the course in 1933 and entered the Faculty of Telephone and Telegraph Communications. I was a student during the period of famine in 1932-1933 and had meals at our students’ diner. We had all food made of soybeans: soup, cookies and a drink.
I don’t remember mass arrests in 1937 [during the Great Terror] 10, but I remember us marching at our military training classes singing: ‘We shall sing a song about Yakir, our army commander!’ and later this Yakir 11 was arrested and executed. A group of military commanding officers was executed at this period of time.
When Tatiana turned 15 in 1935, she went to Odessa to enter the Stomatological College. She failed and went to study at the vocational school. After finishing this school she entered the Medical College.
We decided to get married in 1939. I was in my last year at the Communications College and Tatiana had finished her 2nd year. We got married on 25 March 1939. We had a wedding party for the family: my parents and Tatiana’s parents Srul and Hana. We had a traditional Jewish wedding ceremony at home, but there was no chuppah. Our parents’ acquaintance, an old religious Jew conducted the ceremony. I recited a prayer that I had written for me in Russian letters. After the ceremony we had a wedding party. A day later we had a civil ceremony in the registry office near the Opera Theater.
In summer 1939 I finished my College with honors and we moved to Smolensk where I got a mandatory job assignment. 12. Tatiana could continue her studies in the Medical College in Smolensk. I became a civil communications engineer in communication department of Byelorussian military regiment.
Before 1940 its headquarters was in Smolensk. After the annexation of Western Belorus [and Western Ukraine] 13 the headquarters moved to Minsk. I moved with the headquarters and Tatiana stayed in Smolensk to finish her 3rd year in College. In summer 1940 she joined me in Minsk. She went to study her fourth year in the Minsk Medical College. We got an apartment in an officers’ house in the military housing district of Antonovo Аin 2-3 kilometers from Minsk. Our neighbors were a young Russian couple.
In summer 1941 the Moscow Art Theater came on tour to Minsk. I got a ticket for 22 June and was to go to the theater with a colleague of mine. I got up and had a snack on 22 June. Since I was alone I didn’t even turn on the radio. I packed my gray suit and brown shoes to change to the theater in the evening and went to work by tram. It was Sunday, but I had some urgent work to do. The first thing I heard when I got into a tram was Molotov’s speech 14. The War! I was a reserve officer and I believed it was my duty to go to the headquarters. I never came back home. In the afternoon German planes were already flying over Minsk. There was a German car caught near the headquarters. It was camouflaged to look like a Soviet ZIS car, but there were German uniforms loaded in it. Although I had documents with me I was thoroughly inspected before I was allowed to enter the headquarters office. They were concerned about penetration of the enemy’s intelligence. I was engaged in packing secret documents. We stayed in the office overnight and slept on desks.
We continued our work next morning and in the evening and then the following evening we were taken to dig trenches in the Urochishche area, near Minsk. There were planes flying over Minsk and flares with which saboteurs signaled to German planes. Minsk was bombed continuously. All civil employees were given military ranks. My rank that I was awarded in communications school was first lieutenant. I received my uniform: a khaki shirt, galife breeches and boots with leg wrappings.
I was commanding officer of Communications Company in army 29. We were responsible for telephone communications between the army and divisions.
I didn’t have any information about my family from the beginning of the war. I received the latest card from my father from Odessa in August 1941. I knew about German atrocities against Jews from newspapers and kept writing my father to leave Odessa. After Odessa was occupied I received a letter from my friend Akiva Averbuch’s father in October 1941. He stayed with my parents for some time before he evacuated and also tried to convince my parents to evacuate. My younger brother Fima was in the army near Odessa and my parents couldn’t leave the town without knowing what had happened to him. Shortly after Odessa was liberated in 1944 – I was at the front in Poland – I received a letter from my cousin brother Naum Davidovich. He returned to Odessa from evacuation. He wrote that my parents and sister perished in Domanevka 16 camp for Jews in 1942 and Fima perished during defense of Odessa in 1941.
There was no anti-Semitism in our circles in the army. There were tatars in my unit and there was Brodski, a Jew. However, there were demonstrations of anti-Semitism among high-level officers that were responsible for awards. I faced it when I was to be awarded a medal ‘For combat merits’. Awards were usually handed during intervals when the army units were remanning. The ones that were on the lists for awards were notified in advance. I got a notification and even prepared a speech, but it never got to it. My subordinate received an award and I don’t know for what reason. We were not supposed to ask questions. When I was to be awarded for the second time I was told that it was going to be a ‘Red Star’ order, but instead I was awarded a ‘For combat merits’ medal. I received my ‘Red Star’ when we were near Kiev. My nationality played its negative role in my promotion in the army and after the war.
Later our tank brigade took part in liberation of Warsaw.
In 1944 I became a candidate to the Communist party and I joined the Party in Odessa in 1948.
The Katukov’s army ended up in Berlin. The army headquarters were in 25, Druchenstrasse in Berlin. I went there on business on 8 May 1945. I had a map of Berlin withal streets indicated on it. Although Berlin was ruined in the center it still made it possible to find any location. I remember meeting Kostia Shendera in the army headquarters. He and I listened to an English radio channel in Russian. It announced that capitulation was going to be signed at 11 pm. I decided to go back to my unit. Shendera showed me a shortcut through channels. He didn’t know they were blasted and access to them ruined. To make a long story short, I got lost. I managed to find my way by the lights of moving traffic. I got to the central street and from there I made my way to my unit. We waited for the announcement about capitulation: the clock struck 10, 11 pm, midnight. We were waiting. We were listening to the radio when, I believe, 5 minutes past one it said that there was going to be an important announcement. And indeed, at ten minutes past one our renowned announcer Levitan announced fascist Germany signed unconditional surrender. [Levitan Yury, 1914–1983, was the announcer of All-Union State Radio. He delivered all most important official information, also during the Great Patriotic War.] Our joy was enormous! Those that couldn’t keep it to themselves started shooting in the air. From joy, of course. So I met the Victory Day in Berlin.
There was a vacancy of chief of a communications department in Odessa. My predecessor was sent to serve in the army abroad. I went to work there in 1949. I remember returning to Odessa. The train arrived early in the morning.
We were young and valued the joys of peaceful life. We celebrated all birthdays and Soviet holidays: the Soviet Army Day 21, October Revolution 22 Day. We always got together at Yozef Chizhyk’s home to celebrate New Year. We lived in a big room in 19, Pirogovskaya Street in the early 1950s. There were 18-20 people at our parties in our room.
When Stalin died in 1953 I was serving in the communications unit in Odessa. We all feared a coup or some dramatic changes. There was to be a replacement of Stalin. We were ordered to stay in the unit. However, nothing happened. Our people were taught to have no different opinions. The military that were at the front during the war respected Stalin a lot. We believed that he lead us to the victory along with Zhukov 23.
Tatiana was eager to go back to work. She couldn’t find a job in Odessa for 12 years. She applied to the regional health department with requests for employment many times, but they replied that she didn’t have to go to work being a military’s wife. In 1958 she went to the Ministry of Health in Kiev. The Minister happened to be a kind person. He issued a letter addressed to the regional health department ordering them to help Tatiana find a job to keep up her qualifications. She started work in Illichevsk 24. There was no regular transportation to Illichevsk and Tatiana often had to get a ride on trucks. Commuting took a lot of time. She also had to take care of the household and take care of our sons. Michael was in the 4th form and Evgeni went to school. Four months later Tatiana found a job in a local polyclinic in Deribassovskaya where she worked as a neuropathologist until she retired.
I was earning well and so did Tatiana and we were quite well off. In the early 1950s we bought our first TV set. We spent our summer vacations with Tatiana’s parents in Chirchik near Tashkent. We spent time with friends and went to the theater. Before the war Tatiana and I went to the Jewish theater. I couldn’t understand Yiddish that well and Tatiana translated for me. After the war we went to the Ukrainian and Russian theaters – in one of them performed in Ukrainian and in the other one in Russian. In summer theaters from Moscow came on tours and we attended their performances. The thing is, our children didn’t need us any more. I remember performance ‘And then there was silence’ [after the modern American writer Vina Delmar’s play] staged by the Mossoviet Theater with Ranevskaya and Pliatt [famous Soviet actors]. We preferred the same play staged by our Odessa theater. We thought that Pliatt was overdoing his acting. We also went to the Opera Theater, but not that often. We subscribed to Roman-gazeta [publication of fiction issued twice a month in Moscow], Rabotnitsa [Women-worker, a monthly social and political magazine issued in Moscow], Zdorovie [Health, a monthly scientific popular magazine issued by the Ministry of Health in Moscow]. We still keep articles from this magazine with health recommendations. We also subscribed to newspapers: Krasnaya Zviezda [Red star, daily military and political newspaper of the Ministry of defense, issued in Moscow], Pravda [Truth, the main paper of the Communist Party of the USSR]. We always read articles in newspapers, but we did understand that what they wrote was different from what things were in reality.
I demobilized from the army that same year and received a pension after 25 years of military service. I was 50 years old and wanted to go to work. It was difficult for a Jew to find a job. There was a vacancy at a plant, but when they heard that I was a Jew they refused me. It happened several times until I met my former fellow student Michael Tesler, a Jew. He helped me to get an employment at the Standardization Center in Odessa where I was employed as an engineer. In 1968 I received a new 4-room apartment in a 5-storied house in Cheryomushki, a new district of Odessa, built with the involvement of Standardization Center. This is where we live now.
In 1962 my older son Michael went to school 116, with advanced studies of physics and mathematic. Michael passed an interview successfully and was admitted to the 8th form. He had all excellent marks in this school. There was no anti-Semitism. He had many Jewish classmates. In 1964 he finished this school with a gold medal. 15 other children were awarded god medals along with him. After finishing school he went to take entrance exams to the Faculty of Mathematics in Moscow State University. We were eager for him to be a success and he did enter the university. There was a group of other students from Odessa. They grouped into an association to support each other. There were so many Jewish students at the faculty of Mathematics in Moscow University that it was jokingly called by his friends a ‘cheder with advanced studies of mathematics’.
Evgeni studied in school #90 with the Ukrainian and German languages of teaching. He studied well and was particularly good at history and geography. I brought an ‘officer’s Atlas’ issued in Russian in Dresden after the war: a thick volume including the history of all wars and a detailed description of the Great Patriotic War. We still have this atlas. It is quite worn and shabby after Michael and then Evgeni had it. We always liked books in our family and our sons inherited this from us. In 1969 grandfather Srul gave Evgeni five rubles and our son subscribed to Big Soviet Encyclopedia. We received all five volumes. After finishing school in 1968 finished a preparatory course to the College of Public Economy. He also started work at the factory of manuals to be able to enter an evening department of the Financial Faculty. He was concerned to go to the daytime department being a Jew and considering the existing situation. There was state-level anti-Semitism in Odessa. Now he works as a programmer in Odessa center of Standardization, Metrology and Certification. He is single.
Evgeni studied in school #90 with the Ukrainian and German languages of teaching. He studied well and was particularly good at history and geography. I brought an ‘officer’s Atlas’ issued in Russian in Dresden after the war: a thick volume including the history of all wars and a detailed description of the Great Patriotic War. We still have this atlas. It is quite worn and shabby after Michael and then Evgeni had it. We always liked books in our family and our sons inherited this from us. In 1969 grandfather Srul gave Evgeni five rubles and our son subscribed to Big Soviet Encyclopedia. We received all five volumes. After finishing school in 1968 finished a preparatory course to the College of Public Economy. He also started work at the factory of manuals to be able to enter an evening department of the Financial Faculty. He was concerned to go to the daytime department being a Jew and considering the existing situation. There was state-level anti-Semitism in Odessa. Now he works as a programmer in Odessa center of Standardization, Metrology and Certification. He is single.
In 1972 my wife’s mother Hana Krupnik died at the age of 89. She was very ill in the last two years of her life. She didn’t remember anything and didn’t recognize our old son Michael who lived in Moscow. We buried her at the Jewish cemetery in Slobodka. Tatiana asked some older Jews to recite a memorial prayer at the cemetery. Tatiana’s father died one year and ten months later in 1973 at the age of 90. He had a sound mind until the end although he was bed-ridden in the last days of his life. On his last night he recited a prayer and blessed us in Yiddish. We buried him near his wife’s grave.
I heard about the establishment of Israel when I was in service in Germany. I’ve always identified myself as a Jew and my family perished due to their Jewish origin. ‘I’ve always sympathized with Israel, but I had to keep silent about my attitudes.