Daddy worked in a hospital as a tailor and spent all day there.
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Displaying 2041 - 2070 of 50826 results
Mira Dernovskaya
Daddy died of exhaustion earlier than Lilya. He died on 14th February 1942. We lived in a large communal apartment. Father's body couldn't be taken away right then, so we didn't stoke the stove in that room for several days, and lived in the neighbor's room. Then father's friend and Mum took the corpse on sledges to the synagogue, and there the corpses were sent to the Jewish cemetery in Alexandrovskaya farm. Now there is a large area of land there, where the Jews who died between 1941 and 1942 are buried. Father is buried there too. We even have the number of the trench, but it is now impossible to establish where that trench really is. Therefore, I go there and stand on the site and remember father.
After father's death Mum sold his things and some of our belongings in order to survive. As Daddy had been a tailor, we had some cuts of material set aside for his suit or Mum's coat. Mum sold all that, including our piano, on which I learnt to play before the war.
Mum had no profession. She went to work in a hospital, where she repaired soldiers' regimentals, and at the end of 1944, when the Military Medical Academy returned from evacuation, she got a job in the laundry there. She washed, ironed and sorted out linen, and did all the various assignments in the laundry.
After a while she was transferred to the position of cloakroom attendant in another clinic of the Military Medical Academy, where she worked up to her retirement in 1962. She was easy-tempered, beautiful, and behaved always with dignity. She was highly respected there and heard a lot of compliments from military officers and doctors.
After a while she was transferred to the position of cloakroom attendant in another clinic of the Military Medical Academy, where she worked up to her retirement in 1962. She was easy-tempered, beautiful, and behaved always with dignity. She was highly respected there and heard a lot of compliments from military officers and doctors.
During the autumn and winter of the blockade of Leningrad we didn't study at school. Classes began only in May 1942. I received that medal as a schoolgirl, a pupil of the 5th form, for my work in an agricultural farm near my school in the summer and autumn of 1942, and then in 1943 and 1944, to provide Leningradians with potatoes and other vegetables.
Father's brother Bentse, who worked in one of the large Leningrad factories, was exempted from service in the army at the beginning of the war. When the factory was evacuated, he volunteered to go to the front and was soon killed in the defense of Leningrad.
During the war Eugene, Dad's second brother, laid and repaired the destroyed railway tracks at the front lines and liberated territories. When the war began, he sent money for evacuation to his relatives and their children. He sent his wife Sophia with his institute to Vologda, their daughter Tatiana was born there. After the war they returned to Leningrad.
Uncle Henah was a soldier, too, and fortunately he survived. His daughter Lyuba and his wife were in evacuation near Penza.
Lea was caught by the war in Stalingrad. She and her three-year-old daughter were sent to a military garrison in Kushka, since she, as a doctor, was subject to draft. Her husband was at the front and survived. After the war they returned to Leningrad.
Father's twin sister Malke was evacuated with her daughter from Leningrad to Samarkand. Before the war her older son entered the Military Medical Academy, which was evacuated to Ashkhabad, Turkmenistan. He passed a short course of training there and was sent to the front, where he soon died. Aunt Malke's husband also fought in the war, but survived.
The husband of mother's sister Nekha, like Uncle Bentse, was killed in October 1941 on the Volkhov front. Her son was at the front, too. He left for the front as a pupil in 10th grade, and lost his leg in the fight.
Mother's cousin Samuil died in the blockade of Leningrad. His wife Mary was evacuated in 1943 to Sverdlovsk, where her husband's brother and sister owned a house, and she died there in 1976.
Mum and I lived very poorly after the war, but I finished ten classes all the same, though all my relatives advised me to go to technical school to acquire a major as fast as possible.
After finishing the 10th grade of school in 1948, I entered the Faculty of Radio Engineering at the Leningrad Institute of Electrical Engineering. At school I liked chemistry most of all, but Jews were not admitted to the faculty of chemistry at the university. There was no admission to any faculty at that time at all because of anti-Semitism.
When I was in my first year, there was one curious event. Mum received a letter from one of the pre-Baltic states from our distant relative Dora, who was searching for us. During the war Dora was in a ghetto, but survived owing to a miracle. Later she moved to Israel. This letter, about which we didn't speak to anybody, was the reason for my being called to the First Department for a 'conversation'. [Editor's note: The staff of the 'First Department' or 'Special Secret Department' consisted of employees who had access to state secrets of defense and other industries.
They were not allowed to travel abroad for 10 years or more, but their salaries were higher than that of average employees.] However that conversation didn't have any special consequences. But this is an indication of how well coordinated the censorship or some other appropriate service was then.
They were not allowed to travel abroad for 10 years or more, but their salaries were higher than that of average employees.] However that conversation didn't have any special consequences. But this is an indication of how well coordinated the censorship or some other appropriate service was then.
After graduation I was assigned to the coal industry, and I found myself at a research institute in the city of Stalino. I became a junior researcher, and frequently descended to coal mines. The staff of the laboratory consisted of fourteen employees: thirteen men and me. I worked there for two years and persuaded the chief of the department to let me go to Leningrad.
I was even given letters of recommendation to various establishments, but I didn't take advantage of them, and immediately after my arrival I went to the machine-tool factory, where I was preparing my thesis as a student. I got a job in the Chief Designer Department right away as a designer of the 1st category, as I already had experience in the field. After that, for twenty years, I worked as a project designer.
I was even given letters of recommendation to various establishments, but I didn't take advantage of them, and immediately after my arrival I went to the machine-tool factory, where I was preparing my thesis as a student. I got a job in the Chief Designer Department right away as a designer of the 1st category, as I already had experience in the field. After that, for twenty years, I worked as a project designer.
I hadn't encountered anti-Semitism - neither in our large communal apartment, nor at work. I was probably lucky. There were always decent people around me. One of the reasons for that might be that I was a sociable person, talkative, not wicked, and didn't have any enemies. Somebody could have expressed his bad attitude behind my back, but nobody had ever offended me as a Jew face to face. I was never under pressure at work, either, as all my bosses happened to be Jews.
Of course I could feel anti-Semitism in everyday life, especially in 1952-1953, when the notorious Doctors' Plot [3] was underway; offensive words could be heard in the street and in shops. And it could be this was the reason why I was assigned to that coal industry enterprise in Stalino, despite my honorary diploma.
In 1968 the plant was apportioned a block of flats for its centenary, in which Mum and I received a one-room apartment in exchange for our room in the communal apartment.
When I retired I had a lot of spare time. My friends and I often went to the movies, to theatre, or for a walk in the Tavrichesky Garden, sometimes even had dinner at the Metropol restaurant, here prices during the day were significantly lower than in the evening. In the summer we would go out of town to Repino, Solnechnoye.
But then the standard of living of pensioners went down sharply, and we could no longer go to cinema or theatre, we couldn't even afford to drop in to a café any more, to say nothing of a restaurant.
But then the standard of living of pensioners went down sharply, and we could no longer go to cinema or theatre, we couldn't even afford to drop in to a café any more, to say nothing of a restaurant.
But I am an energetic person. I heard about the existence of the Jewish Center Hesed Avraam. I went there at the end of 1997 and offered myself as a volunteer. And now I work there for the program called Humanitarian Help. The opportunity to help people that really need help makes my life more exciting. I dine in Hesed's charitable restaurant. I attend very interesting cultural events, listen to lectures on the revival of Jewish traditions. All this is very important to me.
Sophia Deribizova
Mum came to Yaroslavl region to be with me and remained with me throughout the war. Later she worked as a tutor in the boarding school. I studied at school and missed nothing. We had very good teachers. German was taught by a German lady from Povolzhye.
In August 1945 we returned to Leningrad with the boarding school, I was 15 years old, and I went to the 8th form.
Then I learned about the Nuremberg trial from the papers. It made a great impression on me, just as the Doctors' Plot [11] in 1953, and even later, events in Czechoslovakia [the Prague Spring] [12]. I felt compassion for people in trouble, and then, probably, understood, what anti-Semitism and genocide was all about, although it didn't touch me personally.
I finished school and entered the Hydrometeorological Institute in 1948. On the radio they talked about the campaign against 'cosmopolitans' [13] day and night: that the Soviet people must be against cosmopolitans.
Anti-Semitism had not touched me in any way, though I heard and knew about it, but my appearance or God rescued me. Wherever I went, in a train, and in casual conversations, people asked about my salary, whether I was married and what my nationality was. I would answer: 'I don't know, what it is', meaning my mixed origins, and it always turned out beneficial for me, therefore I did not feel any anti-Semitism.
In the winter and spring of 1953 I was still a student, and they dismissed our deputy dean as a result of general policies connected with the Doctors' Plot. He became an ordinary teacher. I told him: 'How will the meteorological faculty survive without you?' and he replied: 'And how will I live without the meteorological faculty?' Everybody remembered him, and I corresponded with him later. It was very sad.
I finished the institute in summer 1953, and I was assigned to go to Tashkent to teach hydrometeorology in a local technical school. It was interesting for me and I worked there for 4 years. In Tashkent I rented a corner room from an old and formerly rich Jewish lady: my salary was 90 rubles a month.
Sixty of which I gave her for meals, and fifteen for accommodation. The rest of the money was left to me by my landlady, as she used to say, 'For cinema and for banya'. [Banya is a public bath with public dressing rooms and showers or a type of Russian sauna.]We lived very cheerfully.
Sixty of which I gave her for meals, and fifteen for accommodation. The rest of the money was left to me by my landlady, as she used to say, 'For cinema and for banya'. [Banya is a public bath with public dressing rooms and showers or a type of Russian sauna.]We lived very cheerfully.
In 1957 I returned to Leningrad to mum's communal apartment, a room she received for work in Zemmash [Research Institute of Excavation Mechanical Engineering]. I couldn't find work in Leningrad and lived for one year on mum's expense. Later I felt bad about it and then I had found a job in a weather forecast bureau.
I bought a cooperative one-room apartment in 1962. I was helped financially by all my numerous relatives and friends. I asked everybody to lend me 100 rubles, because the initial investment was 1,300. It was a lot of money, but later some of them remitted my debt and presented that money to me. Then I exchanged this one-room apartment and mum's room for a two-room apartment, in which I now live.