After the war he returned to Gomel and in 1950s he and his wife moved to Simferopol. From there they moved to Israel.
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Displaying 49771 - 49800 of 50826 results
Sholom Rondin Biography
He was very religious even as child. He was constantly praying. He finished a yeshyva and knew Talmud and other religious books. He was an older son and had to go to work to help his parents to raise younger children. Perhaps that was why he didn’t become a rabbi.
My father was also very talented in making clothes. He was an apprentice and very soon became a professional tailor.
My mother’s father Kalman Levenchuk, born in 1865, was also a shoemaker. My mother’s family lived in the outskirts of the town and their customers were mainly villagers and poor families from the outskirts of the town. My mother’s family was poor. I visited them several times. I remember a big stove and reeky walls. It even seems to me now that there was only one big kitchen and no rooms in their house. My grandfather worked on a stool beside the stove wearing a black apron and a cap.
My grandfather made a break for lunch. At that time the house became very quiet. My grandfather washed his hands and prayed. Then he sat at the table and my grandmother poured a ceramic bowl of soup for him. He ate the second course that was usually potatoes with goose fat from this same bowl. I found it different from how they ate at my father parents’ home. They always laid a white tablecloth on the table and put beautiful plates for the first and second courses and always ate a second course with a knife and a fork.
My grandfather spoke Yiddish. I don’t know what language he spoke to his customers – I didn’t have a chance to hear.
My stepsisters on my mother’s side came to say “good bye” to us prior to their departure back in 1991. They live in Israel and they are very happy.
Six years ago my wife and I went to visit them in Israel. We liked it there. It’s a beautiful country. We undoubtedly would like to live there, but we don’t have much time left. We should have moved there 10 years before. Our relatives have a good life there. They receive a good pension and their children are well settled. Yes, we should have gone there. I would have been better there.
Here I lost all my saving to the money reform. I saved my whole life for our old age and for our grandchildren. I had sufficient savings to lead a good life here, but we lost them all during the downfall of the USSR. When my sisters were leaving they took their savings with them and we here were robbed, but there is nobody to complain to.
Jewish organizations invite us to various events, lectures. We watch movies and listen to music at Hesed. Hesed provides us wit medications and food packages. It is a big support – we wouldn’t manage without their help.
I am a pensioner now. I worked as a painter 44 years. I did my work well. Now nobody needs my skills. People wallpaper their apartments. Nobody wants to learn my profession. They will come to it –only it will be too late.
Life was better during the Soviet power. I believed in this power and liked it. The Soviet power wouldn’t have allowed impoverishment of old people – veterans.
I didn’t join the party – I didn’t care about it, especially that they had meetings of all kinds and other activities. I am not a public person.
But I was respectable and didn’t face any anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. I don’t see any anti-Semitism now. I believe if one is a decent person nobody would dare to hurt one’s dignity.
Ladislav Roth Biography
There was one Jewish employee there and they could employ me. I worked in a big hall. One of newly appointed officials, a fascist, often came for dinner there and he always demanded to be waited on by a non-Jew sending me away. There was another hall for Jews in the Korona restaurant. It used to be a banquet hall, but when persecution of Jews began they made it a hall for Jewish visitors to avoid conflicts. There was one Jew working there. His name was Borukh Leibush and when there were too many visitors, it was difficult to wait on all of them. There were complaints. I had hard feeling after each visit of this official and asked senior waiter to let me work with Borukh in the hall for Jewish visitors. This hall was 4-5 times smaller than the others, but it brought ten times more income.
Jews had a feeling that there was nothing good for them to expect and spent their money lavishly. The Jewish hall was always full, they ordered expensive dishes and gave big tips. It turned out that it was very profitable to work in the Jewish hall.
Jews had a feeling that there was nothing good for them to expect and spent their money lavishly. The Jewish hall was always full, they ordered expensive dishes and gave big tips. It turned out that it was very profitable to work in the Jewish hall.
My younger brother and sister couldn’t continue their studies after finishing school. When Hungarians came to power in 1939, Jews were not to be admitted to higher educational institutions. My sister became an apprentice of a hairdresser. She began to work a year after she started her training. My brother became an apprentice in a women’s clothes shop. The owner of the shop was a Jewish man whose surname was Hertzog and his wife was a Christian. Hertzog officially transferred his saloon to his wife and continued to manage it as he did before.
We never came to borrowing money to buy something. My mother only cooked kosher food at home and watched it that we didn’t bring home non-kosher products. My brother, sister and I didn’t follow kashrut outside of our home. We worked nearby. At lunch I went to a small store in the shopping center where they sold ham and delicious homemade sausage where I bought some for myself, my brother and sister that I took to their work. My mother would not probably be happy about this kind of meal, but we never mentioned it to her.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
We never came to borrowing money to buy something. My mother only cooked kosher food at home and watched it that we didn’t bring home non-kosher products. My brother, sister and I didn’t follow kashrut outside of our home. We worked nearby. At lunch I went to a small store in the shopping center where they sold ham and delicious homemade sausage where I bought some for myself, my brother and sister that I took to their work. My mother would not probably be happy about this kind of meal, but we never mentioned it to her.
In the first year of Hungarian rule there were no persecutions of Jews or attacks on synagogues, but in 1940 Jews began to fear going to synagogues. Young men with sticks waited for them in front of synagogues to beat them. Thank God, there were no bombs, but they beat Jews with sticks until they started bleeding. Then Jewish young men began to unite in groups. Before a sermon in the synagogue they also stood there with sticks and didn’t allow hooligans to come near. There were also attacks on passers by with typical Semitic looks. They were particularly mad seeing a Jewish man with a Christian woman, but I continued to see Maria. I didn’t look like a Jew, I was more like a Slavic type of man and we didn’t get in any incidents.
It went on until 1942 when I was recruited to a work battalion. Jews were only recruited to work battalions. Guys of 1922 year of birth got together at the railway station where we boarded a train and headed to the frontier with Austria. Then we were separated into groups of 20 men in a battalion. In my battalion there were 10 men from Subcarpathia and 10 from Budapest. From there we were taken to Koszeg, a frontier town. We were accommodated in barracks. There were no beds or plank beds. We slept on straw on the floor. It was October. There were 40 of us in the barrack and there was only one iron stove and they didn’t allow stoking it, though it was already cold. We threw away straw since there were many bugs in it and we slept on our coats on the ground floor. We didn’t get any uniforms and wore what we brought from home. After breakfast we went to work. Our battalion worked clearing up a forest.
We cut dry trees, removed branches and trunks making a road. In the afternoon we had a lunch break. They delivered a meal from the camp. We went back to the barrack before dinnertime. Hungarians supervised this camp. We got sufficient food. In the morning we got a cup of coffee and had a loaf of bread each for the rest of the day. At lunch we had thick soup with meat and meat with rice and beans for a second course. In the evening we got a piece of sausage and tea. Nobody was hungry.
We cut dry trees, removed branches and trunks making a road. In the afternoon we had a lunch break. They delivered a meal from the camp. We went back to the barrack before dinnertime. Hungarians supervised this camp. We got sufficient food. In the morning we got a cup of coffee and had a loaf of bread each for the rest of the day. At lunch we had thick soup with meat and meat with rice and beans for a second course. In the evening we got a piece of sausage and tea. Nobody was hungry.
We were not allowed to correspond with our families. We didn’t know whether they were alive or not. Local residents told us that in 1944 all Jews in Subcarpathia were ordered to wear yellow stars on their clothes [editors note: yellow stars – hexagonal star of David, a Jewish symbol. Fascists forced Jews to wear these stars for Jewish identification in all ghettos and concentration camps]. We didn’t wear yellow stars, but in February 1944 we were ordered to wear yellow armbands. There were Neologs and more religious Jews among us, but we were not allowed to observe any Jewish traditions or celebrate holidays. Our Hungarian guards didn’t even allow us to speak Yiddish. It wasn’t a problem for me since I was used to speaking Hungarian at home. Many Jews, particularly those from villages, preferred to speak Yiddish.
In April 1944 local farmers told us that all Uzhgorod Jews were taken to a brick factory and then to concentration camps in Poland. I asked Maria to let me know about my family and she said that had been taken to a concentration camp a long time before. Nobody knew those were death camps. We thought they were work camps.
We walked from morning till night. One day American planes flew by. We came to Mauthausen concentration camp. We stayed there few days. The Soviet army was advancing on one side and American troops were coming from the other. Groups of 500 people began to be taken to Gunskirchen concentration camp. It was in the woods. There 6 or 7 barracks for 800 hundred inmates, but they forced about 1500 of us in them. It’s hard to imagine now how two of us fit on plank beds for one. I made friends with a guy from Mukachevo and another one from Budapest. We were the same age. We were in the same barrack and tried to stick together. Once a day we were given some junk food consisting of some slop water and rotten beetroots. Sometimes there was a piece of cabbage. We were given one loaf of bread for ten of us for a day. I don’t know whether there was flour in this bread, but there was sawdust for sure. It didn’t cut, but crumbled. We were allowed to leave barracks at certain time. There were containers with water outside. It was dangerous to drink this water: almost all who dank it fell ill with enteric fever.
There was a toilet for 10-15 people, but all inmates of a barrack were taken to the toilet at the same time. It even happened that some inmates dirtied their clothes failing to wait until it was their turn. It was not allowed to step aside or leave barracks at unscheduled time. The camp was surrounded with towers with guards with weapons on them. They started shooting if they saw an inmate coming out of a barrack at the wrong time. This was not all: there were also patrol dogs in the camp running across the camp watching that inmates didn’t leave their barracks. 5-6 attacked a person like wolves pushing him down. We were so weak that we couldn’t fight back, but I don’t think that even a healthy man would be able to do something. Through the windows we saw dogs tearing people apart. It was scary. They dropped corpses into a swamp near the camp. If somebody died inside a barrack we pushed a corps out through the window and then they took it away from the yard. It’s hard to say how many corpses there were in this swamp. Maybe more than water.
There was a toilet for 10-15 people, but all inmates of a barrack were taken to the toilet at the same time. It even happened that some inmates dirtied their clothes failing to wait until it was their turn. It was not allowed to step aside or leave barracks at unscheduled time. The camp was surrounded with towers with guards with weapons on them. They started shooting if they saw an inmate coming out of a barrack at the wrong time. This was not all: there were also patrol dogs in the camp running across the camp watching that inmates didn’t leave their barracks. 5-6 attacked a person like wolves pushing him down. We were so weak that we couldn’t fight back, but I don’t think that even a healthy man would be able to do something. Through the windows we saw dogs tearing people apart. It was scary. They dropped corpses into a swamp near the camp. If somebody died inside a barrack we pushed a corps out through the window and then they took it away from the yard. It’s hard to say how many corpses there were in this swamp. Maybe more than water.
Finally the morning of 6th May 1945 came when we woke up in the morning and didn’t hear any guards’ voices or dogs barking. It was unusually quiet in the camp. Few hours later American soldiers came to the camp. We ran out of barracks and began to hug them. Now I understand that such passionate welcome was an ordeal for Americans: we hadn’t washed or changed underwear or clothes for a long time, but we didn’t think about it at that time. Our rescue came. Americans told us that the war was over and that fascist Germany capitulated.
I went to the railway station. I saw my sister in the square in front of the railway station. It was hard to recognize her so thin and exhausted she was. We embraced each other. She didn’t know anything about our parents or brother. They were separated in Auschwitz. Ella was sent to Bergen Belsen work camp along with many other girls from Uzhgorod.
I kept telling my sister to stay with our aunt in Bratislava and I decided to come back to Bratislava after I found my parents, brother, Maria and Stepan Baksa in Uzhgorod. We agreed on this and on the day of my departure Ella came to the railways station with me. All of a sudden she said that she was going with me. We didn’t know then that we would never be able to come back to Bratislava. We went home together. The bridge across the Uzh River was destroyed and we had to cross the river. There were other tenants in our house. We stayed with our acquaintances looking for our family. Some Jews had come back from concentration camps. My cousin Vojceh Klein, my mother’s sister’s, Ilona’s son, was home. From Auschwitz he was sent to a camp somewhere in Yugoslavia where they mined for lead. Vojceh survived, but he was very ill. He was lead poisoned and died of it in 1950. He told us that my parents and Ilona and her younger daughter perished in gas chambers in Auschwitz.
Of course, I met with Maria as soon as I arrived in Uzhgorod. She was waiting for me through these three years. We got married in July 1945. It goes without saying that we didn’t have a Jewish wedding. We Reginastered our marriage in a Reginastry office and invited our friends to dinner in the evening in Maria parents’ home.
She worked as a cook in the former Bercsenyi restaurant that was now called ‘Ruta’ [means rue]. I went to work there as a waiter.
When we returned to Uzhgorod my sister and I went to our home. There were other tenants there: a husband and wife. We had documents proving our ownership, but they were in the house and we couldn’t get in. I didn’t know Soviet laws and I didn’t know that I could claim for our apartment and belongings. I went to an executive office [Ispolkom] 10 where they told me that this new tenant man was a partisan and they were not going to make him move out of there. My father’s acquaintance who knew me when I was a child gave me a room in his apartment. My wife came to live with me there after the wedding. When I went to work in the Ruta restaurant a waiter from there suggested that I move into his apartment. 11 There was one room and a kitchen. He got married and moved in his wife’s flat, and I stayed in his flat. I didn’t have anything: no furniture or household things. We had to start from scratch. Our children were born and grew up in this apartment.
At home my wife and I speak Russian or Slovak and my children, grandchildren and even my great grandson have a good conduct of Hungarian. I like speaking Hungarian in my family. When hearing the sounds of the language of my childhood I recall my childhood and my family. It is very sad, but pleasant.