Abstract

Author describes his personal and family history. raised in Odessa. Family was secular; Russian was the language spoken at home, with a minor role for Yiddish. Attended Ukrainian schools and tells of his school environment. Normal life ends at the outbreak of hostilities in june 1941. The civilian population builds air-raid shelters as protection against bombing. family decides to leave Odessa. They travel by steamship - which was struck by an enemy mine or hit an under-water reef. They board trains which take them east. they reach Taldy-Jourgan in the Alma-Ata region of Kazakhstan. Family is assigned to Alkapa aul in the Aksuyski region; well received by Kazakhs. Describes his work assignments and the training he received. sent to work at project of construction of a metallurgical plant. detailed description of working and living conditions. Trains as electrical engineer. At the end of the war, family is united and receive documents to move back to Odessa. Learns of the fate of his extended family. in 1947 enrolls in Polytechnic Institute. the political situation of the Jews becomes more difficult following the establishment of the State of Israel. Son, trained as doctor, emigrates to Montreal, Canada,but faces serious problems getting license to practice medicine and find employment. Lev obtains a visa to come to canada in 1995 to help finance his son's studies. Wife dies of cancer. Concludes with a description of his integration into the Montreal Jewish Community.

Pre-War

I was destined for the troubles of the war in the years 1941-1945. Before the beginning of the Second World War, I lived in downtown Odessa, on Lenin st. (now Rishelievskaia st.) on the corner of Bebel st. (now Yevreiskaia st.) with my family that consisted of both my accountant father, seamstress mother, an older sister, Fira, in medical school and a younger brother, Semyon, in first grade of school. It was a family like all other Jewish families in Odessa, of a secular upbringing, speaking mostly Russian at home along with some Yiddish. I also had an extended family in Odessa with whom we were close, and also my father’s brother’s family in Lyubar, near Zhitomir, from where we moved to Odessa when I was three years old.

Yevreiskaia st., in that time, had a significant part of Odessa’s Jewish population living on it. In that neighborhood, near my house, until the early 40s, was located a beautifully designed synagogue, whose building was taken from the Jews before the war and given to the university for use. In the future, the building was re-equipped into a sports complex. On the other corner of Yevreiskaia was situated a Jewish school, which in the same prewar period was re-equipped into a vocational school of the Vorovskoy sewing association. I started studying in a school not far from home. The school was in a dwelling house. In spring of 1941, a lovely modern school was built in our neighborhood into which ours moved. Both schools where I studied were Ukrainian schools. The new school on Lenin st. was the symbol of the gifts given by the Soviet administration to the new generation destined to live under the communist rule. My class consisted of children of Russian, Ukrainian, and Jewish backgrounds, with the latter predominating. This could have been seen in the class journal of attendance, where next to each student’s name was a column reserved for ethnicity.

I was a good student who liked the clear and ringing Ukrainian language, while my ambition was to attend a college in order to become an electrical engineer. My efforts and success in the study of the Ukrainian language were highly esteemed by our teacher Evgenia Lavrentievna Maistrenko who recommended to me to join the Ukrainian drama club at the palace of the pioneers. After the 1940-1941 school year, our club participated in the regional gifted youth competition. Thus, in early June of 1941, our club performed in front of students from Odessa schools. The play was dedicated to the annexation to the Ukraine of its Western oblasts. I played a boy named Andreyko from the Western Ukraine who, together with his grandfather, worked as a shepherd for a rich landowner. The play began with a dialogue between Andreyko and his grandfather. Andreyko: “Is it true, granddad, that over there, where the sun rises, over the hill, there is such a country where the flowers bloom and there is always enough bread for all the children?”

At the same time, I performed individually at the competition, reciting poetry in Russian and Ukrainian. In this individual competition, I took second place and received a prize. Rumours were such that it was possible that I would go to Kiev to the all-republican competition. Our drama club was getting ready to go out of town all together. However, life had its own course to run. This holiday was not to be, as all dreams were not meant to become reality, because on June 22nd, at exactly 4 o’clock, Kiev was bombed, and the war had begun.

War Time

The events that I had personally experienced, as had tens of millions of people in several countries, will be described in some detail. Most of all suffered the Jewish people, having lost more than six million. Thousands of Jews fought in the ranks of the Red Army, in partisan forces, in soviet armies fighting German Nazis. Thousands of women, elderly people, and children, including Jews, worked in factories, hospitals, and farms, under the slogan “all for the front, all for the victory.” This work was highly important in order to sustain the efforts of the army fighting the Germans. I was one of those who had time to evacuate to the rear, where I worked in agricultural production, in a mechanical repair factory and took part in the building, opening and exploitation of the Chelyabinsk metallurgical plant, which supplied the factory producing tanks with metal.

The events of the war period take up millions of pages in historical books and many kilometers of videotape. I want to tell only about what happened to my own family during this difficult historical time. In the first days of the war, like in other cities, there was much destruction, many killed and wounded. There were no specialized shelters in the city, so that during the first days of the war, during bombing, we had to hide in the basement of our building, where it was very cold, so that we had to wear our winter clothing in that month of June. We were warned not to find ourselves in buildings during bombings. We were told on the radio to dig trenches in the backyards, and instructions were given on the radio that the trenches were to be 2 meters deep and 70-80 centimeters wide. These were equipped in such a way so that we could hide there during bombing campaigns. The opening was to be covered and earth was thrown on top. The walls were lined with boards and the floor with bricks. In the following days, we hid in these trenches while we were bombed.

The water-pumping station “Beplevka”, where Odessa got its water, was bombed, so that there was no more potable water. Problems with bread and other products of necessity arose. I am the one that had to take care of these water and food problems, because at the beginning, my parents still had to go to work every day. I was given money and instructions on what to obtain during the day. On June 22nd, I very suddenly, entered adult life. Often, German air raids descended on the city without warning and the people in the lines scattered around, and after the raids were over, everyone got back into lines in the same order.

In July, Odessa was surrounded, but the radio kept on announcing that “Odessa is and will be Soviet.” Many of my friends were saying goodbye as they were evacuating with the organizations their parents worked for. Organizations such as the ship-repair plant, plant of the October revolution that produced specialized agricultural merchandise, steel-rolling plant, and many others. My family was not part of these organizations; however, we began preparing for our own flight from the city. Unfortunately, thousands of Jews who were unable to leave the city and the oblast were cruelly murdered by the Nazis and by the locals. This black page of Odessa’s history was made known by the miraculously saved few. At night, we saw the red-orange explosions on the battlefield just outside the city. In the mornings, glass from broken windows crunched under our feet as the smell of smoke and lime dust enveloped the city. In the port and next to the opera house, German shells exploded as volunteers patrolled the rooftops who, unfortunately, could not always get rid of the enemy grenades thrown onto the rooftops, sometimes exploding with them. The city was always full of fires, and there was no water to extinguish them.

The last trains left the city in August of 1941. After the railroads were cut the only way out of the surrounded city was by way of the sea. My family, along with countless others, rented a wheel-barrow, the main type of transport at the time, and with our modest belongings (clothes) left for the port in the beginning of September. At first, we were unable to board the steamship, because of an intense German air raid, because of which the ship had to leave shore with the amount of people that boarded by the time of the raid. We found out later that the wounded had priority either way, and that the thirty-five thousand strong army defending Odessa was transferred to Sevastopol, supposedly on military ships.

In the end of the month, we succeeded in boarding a ship, which was supposed to deliver us to Novorossiysk, and from there by train towards the interior of the country. Our belongings were placed in the hold, and we found ourselves in the lower cabins of the steamship. As we descended into the lower levels, we saw on the deck, tens of stretchers with wounded soldiers that were trying to defend our city on them. They were somewhat looked after medically, but I cannot say to what extent, since I do not remember. We were en route to Novorossiysk for approximately two days, but this too is hazy in my memory. What I do remember, and will always remember until the end of my days, is the fact that at around 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning, we experienced such a powerful shock and noise that people fell off of their beds and we found out later that the wounded on the deck fell straight into the sea. Water started flowing into the hold of the ship and a panic developed among the passengers. We tried to make our way through the throng to the deck from the lower levels of the ship. I do not remember exactly what happened, we either came across a German mine or simply an underwater reef, but either way, water started flowing very fast through the created hole in the side and into the ship, especially into the lower levels. The crew began to repair the crack and to prepare the passengers for evacuation of the ship. Over the megaphone, we were told to stop the panic and to try to position ourselves evenly on both sides of the deck. We were also told that we were not far from Novorossiysk and that a rescue ship was already on the way. Time and time again, we were told not to create a panic and that once we got to Novorossiysk the wounded and the newly injured in the incident were to disembark first.

In the middle of the afternoon, we disembarked in the Novorossiysk port, and instead of our belongings, we received heavy wet bundles of clothes. Fortunately, the weather was decent, and once we found our bundles, we started to dry our clothes. Most of the food we brought was no longer usable, which was a big loss for us since we starved during the voyage, and the clothes that were saved were not good enough for trading for food with the native population. We were in Novorossiysk for around 24 hours. The next day, a convoy of covered freight trains arrived, which we boarded. The cars were not meant for humans, but we made the best of it. On the way, we were constantly detached and then attached to a new convoy moving east into the heart of the country. During some stops, our car was detached and sidelined for some time. We used the opportunity to wash ourselves and to try to obtain some food from the locals. There was a multitude of gastro-intestinal illnesses and people became infested with lice.

In October of 1941, we reached Taldy-Kourgan of the Alma-Ata oblast in Kazakhstan. We were placed in a park, given the opportunity to wash ourselves and had to pass a health inspection. The people there already had some experience accommodating evacuees. We were also given food enough for a short period of time. All in all, we were received very well and with sincere sympathy. We were here for a couple of days, until we were brought to our destinations in the small agricultural Kazakh villages. My family found itself assigned to the Alkapa aul in the Aksuyski region. We were placed into a shelter and helped to find some brushwood so that we would not have to sleep on the clay floor. The Kazakhs were very nice to us, and they had absolutely no idea that there were different religious and ethnic groups that came. We were all Russians for them, until some Russian intellectuals came and instructed the Kazakhs that we were Jewish and that all troubles stemmed from us.

After a couple of days of acclimatization, we were divided up into working brigades. I found myself in a brigade whose supervisor was a Kazakh named Bozaral, who knew a couple of Russian words that were enough for our communication. The younger students who had learned Russian in schools helped us adapt. Our brigade performed all sorts of jobs, including the gathering and sorting of straw, gathering of melons and fruits, preparing brushwood for the winter, etc. The harvest was plentiful, and the workers were not, so that our presence at these jobs was very useful. The kolkhoz of Alkapa was 20 km away from the district center of Aksuy and 100 km away from the nearest train station at Taldy-Kourgan. One of the jobs our brigade had to perform was to bring grain to the train station. This was the hardest experience of that period for me. I was personally responsible for the handling of two bulls on the way there, for the delivery of the grain, and for the reception of the needed documents. These trips lasted three days. There were usually five to six carts of grain. During the winter, we worked in the silos taking care of the grain, and also preparing the brushwood for the heating of living quarters. My father was an invalid, as he had no use of his right arm, so that, as in Odessa, he worked as an accountant, a job he was very good at. My family, together with me, had decided that I had to go into town in order to learn a trade. We went to see the chairman of the kolkhoz, Tolkombaev, a very sympathetic man, who had agreed to grant our wishes and signed a statement of our dismissal from the kolkhoz, as upon our arrival, we were all made members of it. I received complete payment and upon the completion of my duties left for Alma-Ata with my father in the end of 1942, where I enrolled in a school. The work in the kolkhoz proved to be very valuable for me because, as the city boy that I was, I had learned to understand the hard work that went into the creation of a loaf of bread. With this ended the first year of my wartime experience.

Studies and work at school F30 was the second phase of my war effort. The school was situated in downtown Alma-Ata next to a couple of workshops, a two-story hostel, and a cafeteria where we ate. The school F30 prepared students for many different trades, including fitters, but the trade they did not prepare you for was electrician - my dream. I got into the group of fitters. We received a uniform, and when we started work at the repair factory doing real work, we even received a small salary. Our group went to eat together in a formation singing patriotic songs. Even the food at that time was adequate. After 2-3 weeks of studies at the school and in the workshops, we were sent to the factory, specializing in repair of automobiles and several kinds of machines. Other than repair, the factory specialized in training future repairers for fixing machinery after they graduate. I was sent to the tool shop of the factory, where along with a couple other fellows, I worked under a highly qualified and experienced master. Working in the shop, I learned the different types and functions of tools, and I also learned to put the tools in working condition after they had been broken. At first, the lack of experience really made itself felt and I injured my hands several times, but after a while, I got the knack of it. Most of the group working with me were 14-16 years old and were mostly evacuees like me. There was even another Jewish boy working with me. While hints of anti-Semitism were felt, there was no truly hostile behaviour towards me.

To receive a diploma, we had to pass both a theoretical exam and a practical one. On top of this, we had to pass a course of military training. The term was coming to an end, and we were getting ready to be assigned to different factories in the city. Suddenly, we found out that a representative from Chelyabinsk was coming to town to choose workers to build and then work at the planned Chelyabinsk metallurgical plant. The local graduates were indeed sent to local factories. I was chosen along with some others to go work in Chelyabinsk. With this ended the second phase of my wartime experience.

We began preparing for the departure, and all of our documents were handed over to the Chelyabinsk representative who was now our boss. For the road we were given some imperishable food and a small sum of money. We traveled in extremely old wagons, but at least they were meant for human travel. The voyage took 5-6 days. Since the plant was still being built, at least a thousand workers were needed for its assembly. The government thus sent temporarily released convicts, captured Germans, and actually qualified workers from all over the country. Because of the new arrival of all of these people, there were serious problems with provision of living quarters for everyone in this part of the country with its severely rigorous climate.

After we were assigned to different shops, we were given food and bread stamps and were told to be extremely careful with these. Afterwards, we were sent to the commandant of the hostel we would occupy for the time being, until more living quarters could be built. The commandant led us to a long wooden hut accommodating 25-30 people. In the hut, we found two rows of beds and small bedside tables for two people. In the center of the hut stood a long and narrow table with a couple of chairs. The commandant made it clear to us that anything valuable was not to be kept in the hut, especially food stamps. I, along with some others from my group from Kazakhstan, was assigned to work at the blast furnaces, constituting the beginning of the metallurgical cycle. All the newly arrived were received by the chief of the shop, Kuzmin, in his office and presented to the supervisors under whom they will be working.
I am not exactly sure how it happened, but the supervisor of the electricians -- citizen Ivan Antonovich Sedykh whom I met forty years later, and whose family had supported me during a very difficult time for me -- said that he needed two more electricians and asked whether anyone would want to be retrained to become one. I and another Jewish boy from the group expressed our desire to do so. The rest started work as fitters right away, while we came to the electric shop for further discussion with Ivan Antonovich. Here, we met the master of the shop, Ilia Antonovich, to whom we addressed all of our questions in the future. Ivan Antonovich told us that until the launch of the plant, we would work at the shop from 8am to 5pm, and from 5pm to 8pm, we would follow courses, except for Sunday. The courses turned out to be both theoretical and practical at the same time. We were warned that we would be able to perform independent work only upon the successful passing of the examinations, since the work would be very dangerous and would carry a lot of responsibility. He also told us that we should take our studies very seriously, because the salary we would receive would be based on the grades we got on our exams.

We received special passes that allowed us to leave the premises of the plant, and even go to the city on Sunday, if we wished to do so. Doing so, however, was complicated, because there was no means of transportation going there, and the distance to the city was ten kilometers. Thus, the whole time I spent at the Chelyabinsk metallurgical plant, I was in town only a couple of times. We received news that the hostel was being built rapidly and that we would move there relatively soon. Until then we would, unfortunately, have to share our living quarters with people of a “different” attitude. These certain individuals demanded that we had to “voluntarily” give them a daily ration of bread every month. Night “fireworks” began. These consisted of putting a paper ribbon between a sleeping person’s toes and lighting it on fire, awaking the person with burns on his feet unaware of what had occurred. We could not resist these individuals, mainly because we were afraid of nightly reprisals. As a result, we were forced to go to sleep fully clothed. Therefore, we were unable to get a decent night’s rest after a hard day of work and studies. Our group from Alma-Ata asked the representative who brought us here to help us. Having understood the situation, he pulled the necessary strings, and after a while we were moved to the unfinished hostel, which was still much better than living in fear all the time.

The rooms in the hostel were made for four people with beds, a small table, chairs and two night tables. I shared a room with a locomotive operator, a fitter, and an operator of wagon weighing machines. They were somewhat older than me, also from out of town, with their families remaining under German occupation. By the end of 1943, all assemblies were finished and the plant started partly functioning. I was finishing my studies and preparing for the exams. After the completion of these, I was made a fourth-grade electrician and the second electrician of the shift. My superior was senior electrician, Victor Klimenko from the Ukraine, who kept asking me how a Zhid (Jew) like me became a worker at the plant. I had to tolerate the anti-Semitic remarks and was preparing for the next set of exams to become a senior electrician.

At the end of February of 1944, the first cast iron was produced at the Chelyabinsk metallurgical plant. This was a festive event at which the director of the plant, citizen Sokol (a Jew), deputies of Chelyabinsk, and the supervisors at the plant were present.
The hostel was 2-2.5 kilometers from the plant, because of ecological norms, as the plant contained dangerous chemical generators and was saturated with radioactive dust that we inhaled during work and could not get out of our lungs even when we went “home.” After a year of walking to and from work, a truck was set up to facilitate getting there and back. At first, the work was very stressful for everyone as all the quirks had not yet been worked out and things broke down all the time. The hardest part was working at night, independent of the amount of sleep during the day. About a month or so later, I passed some more exams to become fifth-grade, and started work as a supervising electrician doing independent work. Due to the lack of qualified workers, I was often the only qualified electrician on the job during my shift. The winters were extremely cold and the work was complicated by the fact that some parts of the plant were outside.

In April of 1944, I was suddenly called to the blast furnaces, because one of the electric cranes broke at the time of drilling a new hole for the release of the next smelting of the iron. Any delay could prove to be very costly as all the iron could be lost. As I started repairing the crane, a worker turned on the power without warning me. Thus, a high voltage current started flowing through me, but I was able to let go of the crane falling from it into the area of the blast furnaces. “Fortunately,” I hit a metal rod with my side, being diverted from falling into the melted iron, instead falling onto some sand, and losing consciousness right away. I was given help by the medics on deck and hospitalized with a broken rib. For ten days, I was immobile and in terrible pain. After three weeks in the hospital, I had to refrain from working for another month and a half, and the pains in my side are still with me until today. Everyone that saw my “incident” was amazed that I was still alive. It was, in fact, Ivan Antonovich’s family that nursed me back to health, feeding me whenever I came by their house. Forty years later, I was happily received in that family as we reminisced about the hard times during the war.
None had complained though about these hard times, because we knew that it was ten times harder and more dangerous at the front. We followed the advances of the Red Army on the radio and knew that the end was not too far for this war that took millions of lives in many countries, but especially in the USSR.

After the War

On May 9 1945, I was working the night shift and only found out the news of the victory once I came back from work in the morning. People were partying in the streets, and my roommates found a bottle of vodka somewhere as I tried alcohol with them for the first time ever for such a worthy occasion. The partying in the settlement lasted several days. A while later, I received a letter from my family telling me about the permission they received to return to the Ukraine, namely to the Kiev region. I started thinking about once again joining my family. The only way for this to happen would have been to go back to school, in the pursuit of which I spent every free minute I had, preparing for the entrance exams to the technical school. My family found out everything I needed for admission and, at the end of August of 1945, I received a short leave from the plant in order to pass my exams at the technical school. After the registration, I went to see my family in Vasilievo, not far from Kiev. I had very little time for preparation for the exams as studies began the first of September. After the successful completion of my entrance exams, I began my studies in the electro technical faculty of Kiev’s electromechanical technical school. With this ended the third phase of my wartime experiences of 1941-1945.

In 1946, my family, consisting of my parents and my younger brother, prepared all the necessary documents for the move back to Odessa, from where we fled from the German and Romanian invaders in September of 1941. After the completion of the first year of my studies at the technical school, I, too, joined them after being apart for five long and difficult years. Seeing that the building we lived in before the war was completely destroyed in the turmoil of the war, with great difficulty we got a room in another neighborhood further away from the center of the city. The room, as our apartment before the war, had only electricity out of all the modern amenities. Water and a bathroom could be found in the backyard, as was the case for more than half of the population of the city. During the winter months, especially at night, we all suffered from the cold, because the stove did not stay warm until morning. There were, in all, three Jewish families in the building. The rest were Ukrainian and Russian. The city allowed the construction of one synagogue in a remote area, which was attended mostly by elderly people who had returned from evacuation. The Jewish population of Odessa after the war was very small in comparison to that of the prewar period, as thousands were brutally killed by the Germans.

Having somewhat restored my knowledge in the technical school in Kiev; I started attending preparatory courses for entrance to the Institute. After the end of the war, my parents found out that in Lyubar, the village of my birth, among the 2000 murdered Jews were the family of my father’s twin brother Zeylik, his wife Manya, her parents Blyum and Volka. A book was written by the title of “Human Family” about this tragedy by a native of Lyubar, Ihil Falikman. My cousin, lieutenant Musya Bilich, died in battle near Ternopol after having fought for the liberation of Lyubar. Only my cousin Golda remained alive out of that whole family, as she was able to run away to Odessa and then ran away from there with my family.
In 1947, after the successful completion of the entrance examinations, I was enrolled into the electro-technical faculty of the Odessa Polytechnic Institute. In the five years after the war, alongside students that went to the Institute after the completion of their high school studies, studied many “old men” as we were than called. We were not interested in the different students’ associations, or in the sporting events, or in the dances and parties. We spent our nights in libraries studying for tests and exams. Some of us were married; some had children, who lived with them at the Institute’s hostel. We were older than the others and thus were more serious and responsible about our studies. I am talking about veterans, of course.
After the end of the war, the army no longer needed so many people. The war effort factories and plants were more or less disbanded and all the young people that worked in these or were in the army were given the chance to continue their education because the country needed qualified individuals for its restoration. Living with my family in poverty, I dreamed of finishing the Institute and to be referred to a place, where I would receive an apartment with facilities. That way my parents could, at least in their older years, live in a place where it is possible to take a warm bath, instead of standing in line in a public bathhouse to be able to wash oneself once a week. The bathhouses often ran out of water or turned off the power when people were still inside, thus forcing them to leave in the state they were in at the moment.

In July of 1952, after my graduation from the Institute, I was sent to the construction of a cement factory in Belgorod near Kharkov, only 16 hours by train from Odessa. I was given an apartment there, thus forever leaving Odessa, so that even entering it would be hard for me from now on, especially being a Jew. As I arrived in Belgorod, I met the family that I would be sharing my apartment with, the first apartment I ever lived in that had a bathroom with a toilet inside. I spent most of my days at the factory, but my experience at the Chelyabinsk plant and my studies at the Institute helped me enormously in the hard work involved in being an engineer of the electrical branch of the factory. For my work, I received a salary that was enough for decent clothes and normal food, but not more than that.

A couple of months later, I was joined by Lyubov Ptashina, with whom I was going for two years in Odessa, and with whom I decided to organize a family once I finished my studies. At the time, she had already worked for a year as a doctor in Donbass after finishing the Odessa medical school. We got married and she received permission to continue her work as a doctor in Belgorod. The law did not allow us to leave the place to which we were sent to for at least three years.

Belgorod was mainly a Russian town with some Ukrainian families and practically no Jews. The only Jews in Belgorod were in the same position as me, qualified workers and engineers sent there by the government with no choice but to go and work. They sought out every opportunity to return to their hometowns of Odessa, Kiev, Kharkov, Moscow, etc.
Alcoholism was a great obstacle to the successful operation of the factory, as often workers came to work drunk, and supervisors like me were unable to rely on anyone. Especially during the holidays, we always needed insurance, as we never knew who would show up for work drunk. I was often called to the factory at night to find a replacement for someone, which was hard enough in itself, but even more so since so few people had telephones. Thus, instead of losing time riding all over town looking for a replacement, I often stayed until morning myself, remembering my Chelyabinsk days.

In 1956, I was transferred to the Zdolbunovo cement factory, about eight km from Rovno, west Ukraine. There I worked as supervisor of the electrical branch of the factory, with almost exclusively Ukrainians, many of who were sent to Siberia at the end of the war for collaboration with the Germans against the Soviets. Working in Belgorod and Zdolbunovo, my wife and I dreamed of moving back to Odessa where our parents lived. In 1960, I found out about the construction of a cement factory in Balka, ten km from Odessa. I took a couple days’ leave to go check out the situation in Balka. There, I met with the director of the factory who told me of the numerous difficulties they had with the construction. He told me that I would be informed when I would be needed.

Shortly after my return to Zdolbunovo, I received a letter from the director telling me to come and solve the question of my transfer to the construction of the Odessa cement factory. The conditions were such that no living quarters or decent salary were offered, but I did not have a choice, since I wanted to return to Odessa to be close to my family. In Zdolbunovo, I gave the director my notice and promised to stay until my replacement knew the job. A couple months later, my wife and I returned to Odessa, and moved into her parents’ apartment, which like my parents’ apartment was without amenities, but we thought that with time we would solve the problem of living quarters. However, when we got to Odessa and started preparing the documents necessary for legal living residence in the city, we were refused it for two reasons. Firstly, the director that hired me was told that there are plenty of engineers in Odessa and that he should have first hired them. Secondly, the apartment occupied by Lyubov’s parents did not meet the requirements needed to accommodate an extra family. The latter problem was solved by my current director who gave us a room in a hostel associated with the construction of a brick factory. The former problem took the director much longer as he continuously put himself out before the authorities explaining that he needed a man with ten years of experience in a cement factory. The problem kept coming back to the 5th paragraph of my passport, which indicated my ethnicity - Jewish.

After the end of the Second World War and the declaration of independence by Israel, which was not in the best of relations with the USSR, the Jews’ situation in the USSR took a turn for the worse. Jews were not allowed to take jobs with Soviet professional or party organizations or any other executive positions. We could only be rank-and-file members of trade unions, the party, and other organizations and give contributions to support the heads of the bureaucracy that kept us out of a job and out of an apartment. Not only this, but a quota was entered that was based on the percentage of Jews in the country - 0.2 %. This was also the percentage of Jews entered into universities, medical schools, foreign language schools, etc., regardless of the grades. Some institutions did not allow the admission of Jews altogether such as the institute of foreign relations.

For almost a year we lived illegally in Odessa, with my wife forced to take on jobs in the countryside fighting tuberculosis which was still not rooted out after the war. Unfortunately, a couple of months after our arrival in Odessa, my 65-year-old mother passed away; the difficult living conditions she has had to put up with finally made themselves felt. We continued living this way, illegally and without normal jobs for four more years until the completion of the construction of the cement factory. I worked very hard with very long hours, but was not compensated substantially for it. My wife found a job in a newly established anti-tuberculosis prophylactic center, where she worked until the emigration to Canada in 1996. My own stressful jobs that I took on since the age of fourteen also started making itself more felt, compelling me to spend several sojourns in hospitals. When I found myself in the cardiac department in the eighties, the doctor told me that if I wanted to live, I would have to leave my job at once. Since I did not have much longer until retirement, the director of the factory transferred me to work as an engineer in the technological department of information and rationalization.

After my first boss left the USSR, I met his successor who told me that as a Jew I was under his control and would have to do everything he told me and nothing more. In shock, I went to the director of the factory and explained to him the situation only to have everything denied later by my anti-Semite of a supervisor. However, the director released a memo informing everyone in the factory that I was now his direct underling; thus I had finished my 25 years at the factory and retired two days into my sixty-first year, being the last of the five Jews that left the factory.

After my retirement, I continued working as a teacher in “Odessa-Energy” and in the Polytechnic Institute. After several unsuccessful attempts to be admitted to medical school, because of anti-Semitism, our son finally enrolled in the Odessa medical school, being the only Jew out of 200 people in his group. Upon graduation in 1990, was sent to the regional psycho-neurological hospital.

After the collapse of the USSR and the emigration of several of our friends to Australia, the United States, and Israel, our family decided to emigrate as well. Our son Gennady began to prepare documents for emigration, including his signing of a contract giving him work in a special children’s department utilizing his medical experience. Once he got to Montreal, however, the post had already been filled. Since all of our life savings had been spent on his plane ticket to Montreal, he needed to find work right away. He started work at a factory for five dollars an hour, while studying French at the same time. He was later told that if he wanted to find a job as a doctor, he would need to finish college and university in Canada, which would take approximately ten years. He stayed at the home of our relatives who had helped him come to Canada in the first place, without paying rent. These relatives moved, though, and the house was sold a year later. My wife and I went to Kiev with the hope of obtaining a visa so as to be able to come and help our son in the tight situation he was now in. He had spent ten years of his life working as a nurse, studying in a medical school, and then working at a hospital. Naturally, he wanted to find a job in the same domain in the free and capitalist country he was now in.

I succeeded in obtaining a visa, and in 1995 came to Canada to try to help my son out. We got an apartment together, and along with holding several jobs, Gennady began getting ready for his American examinations, since in the United States a Russian diploma is accepted as long as the recipient passes the American exams. My wife’s emigration process took an additional year and a half. During this period she got violently ill, and went through a serious operation in Odessa. She only lived for less than two years after her arrival in Canada. In 1998, our son received a green card and after several attempts received a residency in a hospital in the US. He was married in 1999 to Inna Shuman. She is also a medical doctor and in 2001 they had a child, Jonathan David.

During my past years in Canada, I have been involved in several operations involving elderly people and Jewish organizations. Here, for the first time in my life, I found myself in a Jewish community. Most of these Jewish people are from different European countries including the former USSR, having lived through immense hardships during the Second World War. Many had been in ghettos and concentration camps, in partisan detachments, in Siberia and other parts of the former USSR. Many had lost their closest and dearest during the German occupation. I started attending synagogue on Saturdays and Jewish holidays, and I have had, for the first time in my life, a couple opportunities to be present at the extremely festive event of bar mitzvahs. Sometimes, a Jewish-Canadian family invites me to their home for different festivities. Here in Canada, I speak Yiddish, which I only spoke during the first five years of my life with my maternal grandmother Beyla, until our family moved to Odessa in the thirties. This way I can communicate with Jews that are in Canada for a long time in both Yiddish and English, since I am not in complete control of either of the two, having spoken only Russian and Ukrainian for almost seventy years of my life. But we always manage to understand each other. These are my thoughts about my difficult wartime experiences spent in the Ukraine and Russia, that I wanted to pass on here.

Appendix 1

Personal and employment history of Lyubov Ptashna

I, Lyubov Ptashna, was born in the city of Nicolaev in southern Ukraine on January 21, 1927. My mother and father were Jewish.

When the Second World War started my family and I lived in the city of Nicolaev. Beginning from the end of July 1941, the Nazi army bombarded our city and we had no place to hide except for our apartment. The food supply sharply became worse. We lived in fear and horror.

During one of the bombings I suffered contusion and lost my hearing from which I never recovered completely. When the Nazi army approached our city, my parents and I left all our belongings and property and fled the city because we knew that the Nazis were killing Jews.
For over a month and a half we traveled by trucks and freight trains until we reached the Stalingrad region, Station Sarepta. On our way we were constantly under bombardment from the Nazis and suffered from hunger.

In Sarepta I finished 8th grade (1941-42). At that time the Nazis bombarded Stalingrad and surrounding suburbs. We escaped a second time via the freight trains to the city of Barnaul, in the Altay region. Here, I completed 9th grade. From Barnaul we returned to Sarepta where I completed 10th grade. There I was ill with malaria.

After the war my parents and I moved to the Ukraine, to Odessa, where I graduated from medical school. I lived there until 1996 and only worked periodically due to my poor health and poor living conditions; this resulted in my becoming an oncological patient.
Since October 1996 I am a permanent resident in Canada, I receive financial support from the Canadian government and this is my only income. I have asked the German government to consider my history and my situation, and help me.

Appendix 2: Certificate of Employment 1943-1945

Appendix 3: Certificate of Medal to Participants of Great War 1941-1945

Appendix 4: Certificate to War veterans of the Ukraine

Appendix 5: Lev Bilich, wife and son