The closest rabbi was also in Chelm. When we had to arrange something or get some advice, we went into Chelm.
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Displaying 44551 - 44580 of 50826 results
Michal Warzager
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We lived peacefully in the village – our relations with the Poles and Germans were fine. Everyone was amicable. They brought sewing work to my father; sometimes they’d get together in the evenings for a smoke and a chat. At harvest time they’d ask us to help out – they’d ask us, not make us! When they were mowing, they needed someone to make twine and to tie and stack the sheaves. And if there were two or three very dry days, they’d ride up with the horses and I’d help load the sheaves onto the wagon. After that I’d help with the threshing; I walked behind one of the horses. Four horses were harnessed to a treadmill, and I’d be behind one horse and another boy behind another. That was when someone had a thresher. If they didn’t have one, they’d use flails for threshing, like one poor German I used to help. We helped because there was no way to refuse – people would have talked otherwise. There was only one German who harassed us – a forester. We’d go to the forest for brushwood, because peat was a big problem – we started digging peat later, and anyway then you had to wait for it to dry, carry it home and pay for it too. So we went to the forest for wood. We had to sneak in by a roundabout route, because that forester saw everything from his window.
Our relations with others started to turn bad a little while before the war. When Hitler came to power in Germany there were still no problems where we were – it wasn’t until 1939 that things got bad, especially with the Germans. It all started: this is prohibited, that’s prohibited – they treated us as if we were in a labor camp. That’s when we started to get scared. I was beaten up twice; the second time my father rescued me – he came riding up on horseback. They still had some respect for my father, because he did sewing for them.
When the war broke out, I remember how soon the Poles were defeated [see September Campaign 1939] [3]. My neighbor was conscripted and the next day, lo and behold, he was back. He told me that everything had collapsed and that we had no army anymore. Some troops passed through our village, on horses of course. Some of the neighbors fed them – they boiled potatoes for them. I went and hid in the woods then with two of my brothers – the youngest one stayed in the village. At night I’d sometimes go home to get some food. It was a big wood, and there were a lot of people hiding out there, not just the three of us.
Not long after that it was announced that the Germans were coming. I don't remember exactly how it came about, but by some miracle we [Mr. Warzager and his brothers Nute and Chaim] got on a train to Russia. I don’t remember whether we were forced to or not. They took us to a forest – this was in 1939 – and we worked there for about a year; then later we ran away from there and wound up in a little town called Konosha. There was a sawmill there, and I went and asked if maybe they’d hire me. They welcomed me with open arms, saying right off: ‘You come work for us, you’ll work hard!’ And I worked there until the war [the so-called Great Patriotic War] [4].
Then one day they said there was some big news from Moscow. Everyone came out onto the sawmill grounds to listen to the director. And he said that on such and such a day – I think it was 22nd June – the Germans had launched a surprise attack on the Soviet Union.
My brothers had both gone separate ways from me, and I lost touch with them. When we escaped from that work in the woods, we were still together. Then Chaim stayed in Konosha like I did, but at the other end of town; Nute went somewhere else. I never saw him again; all I know is that he worked in some clothing factory, and then he was conscripted and fought in the Battle of Stalingrad [5]. My older brother told me that – they corresponded. And all I could think about that whole time was food. Chaim managed to do better for himself in that town than I did, because he had a skill. I had to go wherever I was shoved. Later on, when I was at the front, we stopped corresponding and I lost touch with him completely. To this day I don’t know what became of him.
A month or so after the start of the [Great Patriotic] war, I was summoned to the conscription office. The commission sat at a table, and they didn’t ask any questions about anyone’s health or anything, just declared us ‘fit to serve, fit to serve, fit to serve’. There were several of us there, and they took us all. After two weeks of training we were sent off to the front. We wound up outside Leningrad – I don’t remember the name of the town anymore. Later an order came through to remove all non-Russians from the front lines. There were lots of us – Poles and other nationalities. They pulled us from the front lines, and they sent us to the big food warehouses on Lake Ladoga – but we were sent there as soldiers, not as civilians. Maybe they didn’t trust us – thought we’d join the Germans or something. They pulled us all out and we went to work, loading food supplies for Leningrad onto barges: different kinds of flour, groats, and rusks – I never saw any bread.
I remember I was working there in 1941 – they were gigantic warehouses, just endless. Train tracks ran through them, and they brought in supplies every day, and it was unloaded and we loaded it onto the barges. Later a new order came through, and everyone who’d been pulled from the front was sent back. And I wound up at Leningrad. The 185th independent infantry regiment – I remember exactly how I was assigned to that unit. And the liberation of Leningrad began. I remember how harsh the winter was – it must have been January or February when they broke the siege. I remember it was bitterly cold, and the snow was so deep. It was very tough going. If we’d been in the woods, we could have hidden behind trees, but this was out in the open, not even a bush – nothing grows on the water.
I remember I was working there in 1941 – they were gigantic warehouses, just endless. Train tracks ran through them, and they brought in supplies every day, and it was unloaded and we loaded it onto the barges. Later a new order came through, and everyone who’d been pulled from the front was sent back. And I wound up at Leningrad. The 185th independent infantry regiment – I remember exactly how I was assigned to that unit. And the liberation of Leningrad began. I remember how harsh the winter was – it must have been January or February when they broke the siege. I remember it was bitterly cold, and the snow was so deep. It was very tough going. If we’d been in the woods, we could have hidden behind trees, but this was out in the open, not even a bush – nothing grows on the water.
After six months had gone by and I was somewhat better, the hospital put me to work. There were storehouses with firewood, and they told me to guard them for the time being and that later they’d figure out what to do with me. After I’d got better and could walk pretty well – as well as possible, anyway – they discharged me from the hospital. The discharge papers said: ‘fit for non-combat duty’. I thought they’d give me a discharge from the army. I had nowhere to go, but still! But no, I was ‘fit for non-combat duty’. I was assigned to something called the Convalescent Unit, where they sent cripples like me to continue recuperating. We didn’t have any medical care anymore in that unit; I had to do everything for myself. In the hospital everything had been taken care of. Anyway, there I was in that unit, and officers would come around when they needed to reinforce their personnel. One day this major showed up and started looking everyone over as if we were cattle at a market. He looked me over and asked how old I was, what my name was and where I was from. I answered all his questions, and he told me to come with him. He picked out two other guys too – three of us all together – and took us to something called the Communications Unit. They had cars there with telegraphs in them, and there was even a woman who taught me to operate it.
I liked that unit. I was just a guard – we guarded the headquarters.
I liked that unit. I was just a guard – we guarded the headquarters.
I read an announcement there about some organization – I don’t remember what it was called, something or other in Polish – and that it was possible to go to Poland. I got my discharge from the army – I’d already served longer than I had to anyway. It was wintertime then: the winter of 1945/46. There were a few of us, and we'd been told which train we were to take. It was bitter cold, but we’d squeezed onto a step and there we stood. Our feet were freezing in those shoes – they hadn’t given us winter boots [rubber boots lined with felt], only officers got those. And off we went, and there were sailors in the train as well. Not like you get here – they were real feisty. They forced the doors open and went into one of the carriages to get warm. And trouble started – the woman who was in charge of that carriage wanted to get the police, but somehow they talked her out of it. And on we went, all the way to Yaroslavl – that’s ... I don’t know, however many kilometers from Moscow. And as luck would have it, the train stopped in the same place our former unit had been stationed in. That village was called Karmanovka. I'll be damned, there I was again! But we stopped there for a long time, and I knew some people there, so I went and stayed with them.
Then later that treaty was signed to evacuate Poles who wanted to return to Poland [see Evacuation of Poles from the USSR] [6]. I signed up for that – they gave us papers. That was in 1946. We spent a whole month in the train, until finally we arrived in Legnica.
Then later that treaty was signed to evacuate Poles who wanted to return to Poland [see Evacuation of Poles from the USSR] [6]. I signed up for that – they gave us papers. That was in 1946. We spent a whole month in the train, until finally we arrived in Legnica.
Most of my family died during the war. That Janek Grygorczuk hid them – he was such a good man, he helped us so much. He knew what would happen if he got caught, and he did it anyway. He lived in Szotyski. My relatives worked with him to build a dugout there, and that’s where they hid. It was out of the way – there wasn’t even a road there, just a sort of path between the fields. They stayed in that dugout part of the time, and part of the time at home. And they might have kept safe until the end of the war, because it was already 1942, which was the worst year for the Germans – they were losing everywhere by then – but someone turned them in to the Gestapo. It was a Pole who did it – I even know his name: Stanislaw Kowalski. He’d had his eye on us for a long time, even before I was born. It was something to do with sewing, and he had it in for my father. And he went to another village, called Kamien, where the Gestapo were, and drove them back hidden under sacks of flour. By a stroke of fate, my parents had something they needed to do, and had come to the house. They’d already spent the night there a few times – they made sure first that it was safe – and they were there then. Kowalski must have been watching them, because he knew they were there. And the Gestapo shot everyone with machine guns.
My youngest brother, Matys, had been hiding at a neighbor’s house – a German communist – grazing his cows. And sometimes he went home for dinner. And he was on his way home then too, but he saw what was happening and started to run away. And he would have made it to a hiding place – he was just a few steps from the woods – but he didn’t make it; they shot him. I don’t know where they are buried.
My youngest brother, Matys, had been hiding at a neighbor’s house – a German communist – grazing his cows. And sometimes he went home for dinner. And he was on his way home then too, but he saw what was happening and started to run away. And he would have made it to a hiding place – he was just a few steps from the woods – but he didn’t make it; they shot him. I don’t know where they are buried.
When we arrived in Legnica, we didn’t know anything here. People simply moved into apartments, whatever they could find. They were empty apartments left by the Germans who had been resettled. We moved into an apartment on Grodzka Street, along with a friend – there were four apartments in one building. He went to work at the steelworks, and I found work with the Russians, in a tank factory. [There was a Soviet Army headquarters in Legnica, stationed in Poland under the Warsaw Pact, and therefore in addition to numerous barracks there was an entire military infrastructure.] It was only called a tank factory – there wasn’t a tank in sight, though, all we did was repair the engines. I worked there until they closed down the factory and left. [Editor’s note: Some parts of military infrastructure were moved back to the USSR a few years after the war.] I remember they didn’t pay well at all, and the work was hard. After that I found a job at Elpo – the Legnica Clothing Factory. They welcomed me with open arms. I worked there as a locksmith for 22 years, right up until I retired.
Right after the war Legnica was almost a Jewish town. [After World War II many Jews who had sought refuge in the unoccupied parts of the Soviet Union during the war were repatriated to Legnica and other towns in Lower Silesia.] I looked around the marketplace, or walking down the streets – Jews everywhere. I knew a lot of people who were traders then. They kept telling me to stop working and become a trader, but I didn’t have a knack for it. They did business with the Russians – they’d buy watches or gold, and then sell the stuff for a profit. But I didn’t like hanging around and haggling with them. The police could run you in for that in those days, and I’d got my honorable discharge from the army and didn’t want to ruin my reputation. Everything then seemed so temporary – we couldn’t be sure we wouldn’t have to take off, or that the Germans wouldn’t come back to Legnica. We’d have our dinners at the Repatriation Bureau – there was a cafeteria there. We didn’t save money. We lived for the moment.
Over the years in Legnica sometimes I have run into some anti-Semitism. There was a fireman where I worked – I even worked with him for a year. He’d watch me doing something and ask why I was doing it Jewish-style. It was a sort of joke, but with a sting. Normally he was as nice as could be, but sometimes he’d burst out with something like that without meaning to. But then, he’s dead now, and one mustn’t speak ill of the dead.
I remember during the Gomulka era [see Gomulka Campaign] [9] when they’d hold those 1st May rallies, some people would dress up as the prime minister, Golda Meir [10], going around in these long gowns making fun of her. In those days there was a lot of anti-Semitism here. Some distant relatives of mine had a shop here, and they had a sign in Polish on the shop saying it belonged to someone else, to some Pole, because the man’s name was Chaim or something like that, and he had to keep it secret.
I changed my first name too, because I was always being harassed. Once I was in a sanatorium in Krynica [a spa town in south-east Poland], and when I arrived I went to register. They write everything down, and I tell the woman I’m named Icek Warzager, and she laughs and mutters something. That made me angry, so I filed a petition and had my name legally changed to Michal. But I remember my real name! Later on there was another guy at work who made nasty remarks about how I got a new apartment. He claimed the Communist Party [see Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR)] [11] had given it to me, just because I’m a Jew.
And I remember 1968, when Gomulka was trying to get rid of us [the anti-Semitic events of March 1968]. I remember what he said as if it were yesterday: ‘I’m not driving the Jews out, but I’m not going to stop them from leaving.’ Where I worked things were pretty calm at that time – that fireman would sometimes make his jokes, but no one did anything in particular against me. The very fact that I worked there so long shows that it wasn’t so bad. If it had been I would have left that job – there was plenty of work to be had in those days; it wasn’t like it is now.
I remember during the Gomulka era [see Gomulka Campaign] [9] when they’d hold those 1st May rallies, some people would dress up as the prime minister, Golda Meir [10], going around in these long gowns making fun of her. In those days there was a lot of anti-Semitism here. Some distant relatives of mine had a shop here, and they had a sign in Polish on the shop saying it belonged to someone else, to some Pole, because the man’s name was Chaim or something like that, and he had to keep it secret.
I changed my first name too, because I was always being harassed. Once I was in a sanatorium in Krynica [a spa town in south-east Poland], and when I arrived I went to register. They write everything down, and I tell the woman I’m named Icek Warzager, and she laughs and mutters something. That made me angry, so I filed a petition and had my name legally changed to Michal. But I remember my real name! Later on there was another guy at work who made nasty remarks about how I got a new apartment. He claimed the Communist Party [see Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR)] [11] had given it to me, just because I’m a Jew.
And I remember 1968, when Gomulka was trying to get rid of us [the anti-Semitic events of March 1968]. I remember what he said as if it were yesterday: ‘I’m not driving the Jews out, but I’m not going to stop them from leaving.’ Where I worked things were pretty calm at that time – that fireman would sometimes make his jokes, but no one did anything in particular against me. The very fact that I worked there so long shows that it wasn’t so bad. If it had been I would have left that job – there was plenty of work to be had in those days; it wasn’t like it is now.
I started to be regularly involved with the Jewish community in 1977. It used to be a big community, but nearly everyone’s left [the Jewish community in Legnica now counts only few members, most of them are older than 70]. First the young people. And then I look around and – hmm, this one’s gone, that one’s gone. Some of them said nothing about leaving. Some of them told me that they were going to Israel, that they were going to eat oranges all day long, and that they wouldn’t forget me and would send me packages. And it would have been nice to get even one package – half an orange, at least!
I thought about leaving too, but one day two friends came back to Legnica from Israel, and one of them – his name was Berek – had red eyes, like a rabbit’s. I asked him what that was from, and he said it was the heat. So the climate was what stopped me. And I didn’t go to America because I was old already – what would I do in America? I’d gotten used to life here, and after all, I thought to myself, I knew these Jews here pretty well, and I had friends at work – we’d get together and sing a few songs and have a good time sometimes. All that was lacking was money.
I thought about leaving too, but one day two friends came back to Legnica from Israel, and one of them – his name was Berek – had red eyes, like a rabbit’s. I asked him what that was from, and he said it was the heat. So the climate was what stopped me. And I didn’t go to America because I was old already – what would I do in America? I’d gotten used to life here, and after all, I thought to myself, I knew these Jews here pretty well, and I had friends at work – we’d get together and sing a few songs and have a good time sometimes. All that was lacking was money.
Earlier there was a rabbi who used to come to our community in Legnica. His name was Schudrich [Michael Schudrich is now the rabbi of Warsaw and Lodz]. He was great. I remember that he’d bring candles for Chanukkah – we light candles at Chanukkah. He’d come here from Wroclaw to see what our prayer services were like. Sometimes he’d be here on Saturday and read the Torah for us. And now there isn’t anyone to read the Torah. We just have the main prayers. No one’s left who knows how to read the Torah – I don’t myself. Maybe I’d be able to decipher some of the words, but it’s very difficult, and I’m not going to try it. But I can read the regular prayer book, and the chairman of the community, Jozef Zilberman, and I share reading the prayers and managing all the religious stuff. The others sit there, and they chat quietly, because if they talk too loud it bothers us. Sometimes the chairman raps on the table and says: ‘Quiet! No talking now!’ And they stop, but only for a minute.
We always meet for services on Saturdays and on the holidays, and if a holiday falls on Friday, for example, we go on both days. On Yom Kippur we used to spend all day in shul, but nowadays we start later and don’t take breaks, because hardly anyone comes back from them. We do everything the way it’s supposed to be done, and in the evening around 5, when we go home, everyone who’s been fasting rushes for some food. But the ones who used to fast have died now. I don’t fast, because I reckon I was undernourished enough when I was young.
I always go to shul on Saturday, since if one or two people are missing, the service can’t take place. I go, and I sit; it’s not so tiring for me – just a little if I stand for half an hour at a time. Sometimes we have a memorial prayer for some deceased friend or relative. We recite a special Kaddish then – either I recite it, or the chairman does. The older folks who didn’t emigrate attend pretty regularly. Every Saturday we have a half-liter of vodka, and sometimes someone smuggles in a bottle of their own, so we can always have a drink. And the little meal doesn’t cost anything – they always prepare something for Saturday. For example a kosher chicken cutlet, potatoes with some gravy, and sweet tea with lemon – no wonder people attend! But not too many people – sometimes there’s barely ten. It’s a change of pace, anyway; with the meal and all, it lasts a couple of hours. We talk – we can’t speak Yiddish, though, since not everyone there understands it. So we talk in Polish, and if I need to discuss something with the chairman, then we speak Yiddish.
I always go to shul on Saturday, since if one or two people are missing, the service can’t take place. I go, and I sit; it’s not so tiring for me – just a little if I stand for half an hour at a time. Sometimes we have a memorial prayer for some deceased friend or relative. We recite a special Kaddish then – either I recite it, or the chairman does. The older folks who didn’t emigrate attend pretty regularly. Every Saturday we have a half-liter of vodka, and sometimes someone smuggles in a bottle of their own, so we can always have a drink. And the little meal doesn’t cost anything – they always prepare something for Saturday. For example a kosher chicken cutlet, potatoes with some gravy, and sweet tea with lemon – no wonder people attend! But not too many people – sometimes there’s barely ten. It’s a change of pace, anyway; with the meal and all, it lasts a couple of hours. We talk – we can’t speak Yiddish, though, since not everyone there understands it. So we talk in Polish, and if I need to discuss something with the chairman, then we speak Yiddish.
I met my wife in Russia. We were there a while together – we even went and registered in the register office there as a married couple. And then we had another wedding here in Legnica. It never bothered her, my being Jewish. We never even talked about it; it just wasn’t an issue for us. She often used to go down to the social club with me, and sometimes to community meetings as well.
My stepdaughter knows I’m Jewish and that’s never been a problem for her. She doesn’t go to shul with me, but she respects me and she knows a lot about Jewish culture. She studied medicine in Wroclaw and became a doctor; now she works in Legnica.
I belonged to the Communist Party [PZPR]. Back then every party member was required to bring in one more. This one old communist zeroed in on me somehow. He told me I should sign up, that I’d be better off; I’d have a better job and higher pay. And that it was all just politics, nothing more. And that’s how he pulled me in. That was here in Legnica, at the place where I worked – the factory PZPR committee. I went to meetings, briefings and things like that. And in May I had to wear that armband of theirs. I didn’t have a choice; all the party members had armbands that said PZPR. None of it sat very well with me – they called those meetings really often, and they were after work, which made life hard. There I’d be after a long day’s work and there was still a party meeting to go to, starting at 4:00 or 5:00. And they’d last for hours. But there were a couple of perks. They didn’t give me any money, I didn’t earn any more, but they always treated party members a bit differently.
And then along came Solidarity. There was this one party secretary [of the local PZPR Committee] – I still see him around sometimes. He set out a basket and said: ‘Anyone who doesn’t want to be a party member anymore can throw their membership cards in the basket.’ Everyone started handing in his or her cards. And he asked me why I wasn’t giving mine back. I told him: ‘I’ll bring mine tomorrow – I don’t have it with me.’ Which was true. And the next day I put it in that basket. Everyone else was doing it, so I couldn’t very well refuse. I was no tough guy. And that was the end of my party membership.
And then along came Solidarity. There was this one party secretary [of the local PZPR Committee] – I still see him around sometimes. He set out a basket and said: ‘Anyone who doesn’t want to be a party member anymore can throw their membership cards in the basket.’ Everyone started handing in his or her cards. And he asked me why I wasn’t giving mine back. I told him: ‘I’ll bring mine tomorrow – I don’t have it with me.’ Which was true. And the next day I put it in that basket. Everyone else was doing it, so I couldn’t very well refuse. I was no tough guy. And that was the end of my party membership.
Leya Yatsovskaya
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All my children decided to marry non-Jews. Alexandra’s private life wasn’t easy. She married a Lithuanian, Jurovichkas, and gave birth to two children, one after the other. She has a son, Lukas, who was born in 1975, and a daughter, Maria, born in 1976. She was named after her grandmother Maria. Unfortunately, Alexandra’s family severed in 1979: her husband took to the bottle. My husband and I helped Alexandra a lot. She wouldn’t have made it without us, neither from the moral, nor the material standpoint. We have always livеd together. Now, in 2005, Maria, my favorite, is finishing the Academy of Arts having followed in the footsteps of her mother. She is to take training abroad. Lukas wasn’t willing to get higher education. Now he is a manager in some firm. Adomas got married too early, in my opinion. It wasn’t in my principle to object to the choices of my children. His wife Laima is a Lithuanian. She teaches English. Adomas has a son, Marius, named in honor of his grandmother. Jakuba’s wife is also Lithuanian. They have a son, Justas.
Jewish traditions weren’t observed in our family and the children weren’t nurtured in them. On Pesach I went to Dora’s or Malka’s sometimes. We just commemorated our parents. We paid close attention to things happening in Israel, sympathized with our national brothers during the Six-Day-War [22], and other conflicts. Our family didn’t think of leaving the country. Our children were raised as internationals. All of them are Jews, but the epoch they were raised in, made certain adjustments. They never observed Jewish traditions, though they respected them as much as the traditions of other people.
Our children embodied the dreams of their father. We, parents, were so happy to see what we could have never expected. All our children had artistic talents like my husband. Alexandra, Adomas and Jakuba graduated from the Vilnius Institute of Arts. They are specialized in different fields. Alexandrа deals with theater decorations. Adomas is a theater artist. He has worked in the Vilnius drama theater for many years. Now he is teaching at the Academy of Arts. He works with many producers, often goes on trips overseas. Jakuba became an expert in computer graphics. He is considered to be one of the best experts in Lithuania.
My husband and I were happy together, raised children. We had an average living wage. Our salaries were a little bit higher than average, and it was impossible to make more. We had enough for a living, but we had neither a car nor a dacha [21]. Though, once my husband bought a ‘crate’ and he spent more time under the car, repairing it, than in the car. We always went to the best resorts in the country, getting trip vouchers from our organizations. We went to Palang, the Crimea and Caucasus. Sometimes we took the children with us, but mostly they went to pioneer camps. We also were avid readers. We didn’t miss a single cultural event in Vilnius: we attended all theater performances and concerts. We nurtured love for beautiful things in our children.
All those years I was keeping in touch with my sisters. The eldest, Dora, worked at a secondary school as a mathematics teacher. Then she retired. Dora died in 1985. Her daughter Elena got higher education. She lives in America with her family. Riva couldn’t forget her husband, who perished, for a long time. She was often proposed to, as Rivasya was a beauty. She couldn’t make up her mind to get married. Finally, she agreed, but it wasn’t the best choice. Her husband, a Jew, Shtrenene, didn’t act the way a Jew was supposed to. He liked liquor and got drunk, and then he became harsh and aggressive. Riva moved with him to Klaipeda. There she gave birth to twins: a boy and girl. Riva died early, in the mid-1970s. She was afflicted with jaundice. She was taken to the hospital and passed away there. When she died, her husband took the children away, and we didn’t get in touch after that. I don’t remember the names of Riva’s children. I only saw them two or three times in my life. My third sister, Malka, and her husband left for Israel in the late 1970s. Shleime died a couple of years ago and Malka lives by herself now. They didn’t have any children.
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After WW2
See text in interview
My mother didn’t live to see her third grandchild. In 1959 I gave birth to a boy. He was called Jakuba, after Jacob Yatsovskiy. My mother had passed away, so my mother-in-law helped me raise my boy. Maria and I bonded well. She didn’t have a daughter, but she considered me to be her daughter. I loved and respected her as well. Maria died in 1972. She was buried in the town cemetery, the way she wished. After all, she was an atheist.
We had a happy living. I loved my husband very much and he cared for me, too. Both of us doted on our children. My husband treated my relatives really well, too. I was always close to my mother and sisters. My mother got ill rather often after the war. She tried to observe Jewish rites while she was breathing. She went to the synagogue and ordered a Kaddish for my father. My mother always tried to observe the kashrut and didn’t work on Sabbath. She fasted on Yom Kippur and marked Pesach. She always had matzah for that holiday and we, children and grandchildren, went over for dinner on the first day of Pesach. In 1957 my mother died. She was buried in the Jewish cemetery and an elderly Jew recited the Kaddish for her.
Stalin died in 1953, and my father-in-law had passed away by that time. I don’t think he would have cried or mourned like many others. Both he and Maria practically disbelieved the ideals which they had devoted part of their lives to. At any rate, my mother-in-law took the death of our leader more or less calmly, even ironically. I cried and suffered sincerely. Maria and Evsey gladly took the resolutions of the Twentieth Party Congress [20] and divulgement of Stalin’s cult. It was more obvious for them than it was for me. After Stalin’s death I was hired by the administration of the Central Committee as the chief accountant. Evsey also got an excellent offer. In the post-war years he entered the Moscow Juridical Institute, which had the extramural department in Vilnius and graduated from it with honors. Evsey was offered a job at the Presidium of the Supreme Council of Lithuania. He worked there for many years and became the head of one of the departments. Evsey was joking that before the war he couldn’t have imagined himself anything but an artist, but he became a lawyer which didn’t seem to be fit for his nature.
In 1951, my husband was demobilized from the army without any explanations. He remained jobless. He felt dejected. I tried to support him the best way I could. After some weeks I was fired as well. The true hypocrisy of the Soviet regime was shown now. They didn’t want to dismiss me completely as I was very literate, and had an excellent command of Lithuanian, Russian and even foreign languages. They couldn’t leave me in the administration of the Central Committee of the Party because anti-Semitism was thriving. In one of the publishing offices of the party, they introduced a new position with a personal salary especially for me, and I was employed there. All those events affected the nerve system and health in general. My father-in-law, Jacob Yatsovskiy, was stricken with an illness, having been worried about anti-Semitic campaigns and the troubles of his children. He stayed in bed for a couple of weeks and died in 1952. He was buried in the town cemetery in Vilnius.
It was the period of state anti-Semitism, which was spread from Moscow to the outskirts like a multi-headed sea serpent. The struggle against rootless cosmopolites [see Campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’] [18] was in full swing. The papers were full of articles about doctors being murderers [see Doctors’ Plot] [19]. My husband and I understood that we could become victims as well. That was the way it happened.