Vera's memoirs

Lubensky memoirs

by Vera Lubensky (1914-2005)

translated by Aaron Korby

Extract from memoirs about pogroms

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I witnessed and was lucky to survive horrific Jewish pogroms in Chigirin in 1919.
It all started like that. At the time of my story, our family resided at my grandfather’s house in Matveevka. The family owned a small store.
One day quite late in the evening we saw a cart carrying 4 – 6 men stop at the entrance to our house.

Memoirs of Vera Lubensky

I was playing outside together with other kids when the men broke into the house and demanded money and other valuables from my parents. In rage they, hit my mother and my father repeatedly. While the robbers were busy taking their loot outside, which was everything they laid their eyes on, my father managed to get away from them, lock the bedroom door from inside, and escaped through the window. It was very dark outside, which helped my father to sneak into the safety of our neighbors’ yard. We, kids, hid behind the furniture, and scared to death sobbed quietly while the robbers were beating our mother severely. She was screaming, and sobbing and we were very scared. Hearing the screams from our house our neighbors, the peasants, rushed in and saved my mother’s life. Two brothers, Vasily and Sofran Zadorozhny, rescued our family from the thugs. The robbers slashed Sofran’s face in the fight. The thugs took off with all our belongings and our horse.

In town

Perhaps the town would provide safety, the place where Jews don’t live in constant fear of pogroms. Our parents had relatives in this town. So we moved. Settled in an old house that had a cellar, a barn, big yard and a garden. The house belonged to our relatives. Other relatives from other villages also joined us. One family brought in their cart the body of my uncle who had been killed in a pogrom the day before. My other uncle was badly wounded. He was attended to. Everybody was distraught, horrified: the war was going on, bandits, pogroms, the kids went hungry, and there were no jobs in sight to support the family.
Jews from surrounding houses gathered in our house every day, they prayed, took turns at night to guard the area to keep the kids safe. We had just a few calm days in Chigirin before we heard gunfire on the streets, saw fires, burned houses, witnessed thugs break into houses. Adults rushed us, kids, into the cellar. It unexpectedly became very scary to live in Chigirin as well. I still remember the names of the people who led the gangs, bands, and armed forces: Kotsupa, Denikin, Gonchriaev, Petlura. All of them marched through Chigirin, and on their way through the town, they all, with no exception, carried out violent anti-Jewish riots. Thugs from Petlura army broke into our house and killed my father and my brother. They were lying on the floor in a puddle of blood for a long time, to get outside I had to step over my father’s dead body. The puddle was so big that when trying to by step it I slipped and fell on the floor next to my father’s body. I was covered with blood all over and had to continue wearing these clothes soaked in my father’s blood since I didn’t have anything to change into. We did not have anybody to help us with the burials so the bodies were in the house for a long time until somebody finally came over, during a lol in the fighting, and buried our loved ones. There was no calm day, as soon as one gang left the town another one marched in and the violence continued.

Grigoriev and Petlura bands were the most vicious.
We continued staying with our relatives: aunt Rachel, Freida and Boris. One day Denickin thugs broke in, beat everybody up, and looted the house. They took off with our cloths, remaining money and valuables. We were lucky they did not kill us. A devastating tragedy came later when Petlura’s band got into the town. They were especially keen on murdering Jews, burning their houses.

They put our synagogue on fire. My brother Nahim and I hand-in-hand rushed to the burning place. Nahim was 8, I was not yet 6. We, hungry and dirty, watched people fighting the fire, trying to safe old precious prayer books in leather jackets. We picked up two books from the ground to save them. A woman who was also watching the devastation and saw us take the books whispered to us with compassion in Ukrainian: “Get out of here, otherwise they’ll throw you in the fire, they want to burn all you Jews”. Many books that belonged to the synagogue, including holy Torah scrolls, were burned in a pyre in the middle of the street. We didn’t leave the two prayer books behind, brought them home instead. As we learned later, those two were very valuable books; they were in our possession until 1941.
We were completely on our own roaming the streets of the town in ruins: our father was dead, and we had no idea where our mother was. To our relief our mother came back, and aunt Peisya and Abram, and other familiar Jews. It was very cold outside, and in the house, and there was no food. And again, the already familiar agonizing sounds of gunfire, that were followed by another pogrom. By then we did not have anything for the robbers to take from us. The bandits beat Gedalia and other Jews before killing them. Nahim and I hid behind the stove when we heard the bandits coming in. Aunt Reiza overwhelmed with grief confronted one of the killers: “Why did you kill my son; how did he wrong you?”. The bandit shot her in the face, and she fell down. For many days afterwards, her dead body was laying on the floor in the puddle of blood right where she was shot. Her face had a huge wound. We roamed the yard and cried our eyes out.

Vera in WWII

I recall hiding in the cellar with other kids, there was a bathtub over there, huge, made of wood. That day Aunt Rachel, my father’s sister, and her children arrived from afar to join us. They came from Kniazi village, where Aunt Rachel’s husband was killed. Aunt Rachel came to us with six children, three of them, Motya, Klara and Issak were little. Issak, the youngest, was still a baby. The kids including me were playing in the bathtub when a bunch of thugs broke in. We immediately got very quiet, as luck would have it even the baby in Aunt Rachel lap did not make a sound, did not reveal our presence in the house. The bandits didn’t go down in the cellar to check it out, so we lived.
My mother and other grownups who lived in the house left the house at night to hide from the bandits. The kids were left behind, we all slept in one bed, without undressing, keeping our shoes on.

There were several dead bodies in the house. We suffered from cold, and hunger. At night our gentile neighbors would come in to steal whatever was left in the house. They took out wooden frames from the kitchen windows, looked through empty drawers, and cabinets, did not find anything. They came into the bedroom, saw the blanket that covered us all and left, stepping over the dead bodies, taking the only blanket we had with them. Those neighbors who robed us were Gritsko Hasan and his two sons. They had guns. It was winter, very cold outside, no heat to keep the house warm, and there was no food.
When our mother came back from hiding, she arranged moving us to another part of the town, which she hoped would be safer for us. So, we left. Everybody got to transport something, I was entrusted with carrying a heavy cast-iron kitchen pot, my hands got very cold and I was crying. On our way we had to cross a bridge, and because we heard gunshots everybody ran, and I was left behind, fell in the middle of the bridge with the treasure pot in my frozen hands.

Vera with her daughters in Minsk

My mother was all in tears, in panic, she could not reach me, but lucky me I managed to get to her on my own, my face covered with blood from falling, my legs barely moving, stiff from the severe cold.
At last we got to where we were heading. The house felt heavenly warm, the hosts were very friendly to us, they welcomed us with boiled potatoes. Those hot skin-on potatoes were delicious!

We slept on the bare floor, no beddings, but we were happy: the room was warm, and most of all – our mother was beside us. To this day I am immensely grateful to those kind people, who being impoverished themselves, shared with us the little they had. After staying with this family for a while our mother decided to leave Chigirin for good. Uncle Vasily Sadorozhny helped us to get to Krylow (Novogeorgievsk). Krylow was a small town, had housed Russian Army during World War I. The town’s military presence has since been lost. There were several churches in Krylow, but we felt safer there comparing to Chigirin. We heard sounds of gunfire, but not as often as in Chigirin, and pogroms here were smaller in scale. Eksler was the name of the family who owned the house. The house stood on the bank of Tiasmin River, the ground level of the house that we occupied would get flooded rather often as the river rose.

The year was 1920.

We lived close to a church shelter and to a farmer’s market, the area was crammed with beggars and other destitute people. As I said before we lived in the basement. Slept on the floor, covered for warmth with rags. The always-wet part of the house attracted frogs, they were everywhere. I feared them. Every morning I would mop the floor, gather frogs in a pile, and transfer them into a huge basket, from which they easily escaped. Although my efforts to clear the floor were pretty useless, I stubbornly repeated the routine the next day again horrified by the sight of them jumping around us at night, touching our faces and legs.
I and other kids who also lived in the house fell ill with Epidemic typhus. We were kept together, Mother brought in a pack of straw, which became our mattress, and more rags to cover us up with. There was no food in the house. The mistress of the house, Ms. Eksler, stopped by and brought us a bowl of pickles and a slice of bread for each of us. The pickles made us thirsty. We gulped water from a big clay pot, the source of the water - Tiasmin River. That’s what we drank.
Mother took on herself by then my duty of fighting frogs. She diligently swept the floor around us several times a day, but they managed to hide from her and come out again, green and ugly, totally disgusting. A huge toad lived under the stove, she was the one that frightened me the most. It seemed she was staring at me. I imagined her jump on my face when I was asleep so I asked Mother to take out the creature, but Mother refused, and let her be. She told me it was a big sin to kill this toad. My brother Aaron was not afraid of frogs, he played with them, petted them, carried them around. If they bothered him, he picked them up and tossed away. Mother tried to ease my fear of frogs: “Some people like to eat them, and you are afraid of them!” We were sick for a long time before we got better. It was a miracle that we survived typhus.
Mother told us one day: “Children, don’t ask for food, hunger is upon us, if I find something to eat I will give it to you.” When she was lucky to get some buckwheat bran from a flower mill she baked “pancakes”, which we gobbled up. They made us vomit. One evening she saw a horse cart stopped at the gate. I recognized immediately that it was our friendly neighbor Vasily Zadorozhny, from Matveevka village. He brought us a sack of millet and a sack of apples. We were elated, millet porridge and apples!
What a delight it was our millet porridge, no milk no butter, no sugar, of course, just millet grains and water. We were so happy! Everything was changing for the better, we saw smile on Mother’s face. We used to see her sunk deep in her thoughts, overcome with worry and sadness.

Then came another good news: we received a parcel from America! From Uncle Yitzhak Smeliansky. He sent us rice, cans of condensed milk, and money. That was quite helpful, little by little our life started showing signs of normality. Our American uncle also sent clothes for us, children: a dress for me, and several pairs of pants for my bothers.

Vera with her grandchildren in Chicago

Shoemaker Staschenko made shoes for us all, I remember him fondly, he was a very kind man. His wife’s name was Frocya. They did not have children. One day they came over, and had a long conversation in private with our mother. Mother was crying, we overhead her say: “I have only one daughter, can’t give her away to anybody”. Childless Staschenko couple wanted to adopt me, but Mother stayed firm. Even at the time when the hardship was the worst and the hunger was unbearable she did everything she possibly could to save our lives, and keep us all together.
Mother’s father, our grandfather Munim Vereschatsky, was not with us at the time of horrific pogroms in Chigirin. He fled the town when the pogrom started, and we hadn’t known until we moved to Krylow if he were alive. There in Krylow Mother got the news that he had survived and was living in Knyazhna village. Mother got in contact with him, and asked him to move in with us.

We were expecting him for the Rosh Hashanah, but he didn’t arrive, and there was no word from him. Mother was overwhelmed with worry, was looking for him relentlessly. Finally, the news came that on the way to see us he stopped overnight at our relatives’ house in the village of Matveevka.
That night several bandits broke in, demanded money and gold, which nobody had. They started beating them up, then took them to the basement of the landlord Bespalov and killed them. Some peasant driving into Krylov met my mother and told her that grandpa Munin and a relative were killed. Their corpses were still in the basement. Mother went to Matveevka and brought the killed in a horse cart.
They were buried in Kamenka at the Jewish cemetery. Daughters Milka, and Zina sent some money for a tombstone from America. When I got older and began working as a teacher in Kamenka, I visited my grandpa’s grave often. He was 80 when he was killed.

My life after the civil war

The year 1921

One day Mother ran into her brother-in-law in the street, he had been looking for us. He was in big sorrow: his wife had just died giving birth to their son. She fell in with Spanish Influenza late in her pregnancy, and didn’t survive the delivery. The boy was named Froym (his mother’s name was Feyga).
By the time Mother met my uncle Boris, the sweeping influenza epidemic had taken more than ten million lives; almost as many people lost their lives during the war. Uncle Boris and Mother decided to live together and take care for their children as a family. The family of 11 people. Mother worked around the house very hard day and night: sewing, cleaning, doing laundry, tending to Froym but he still looked very sad, wasn’t gaining weight. There was no milk, no food for the baby. We were starving. Mother’s sisters came to rescue, they lived in Philadelphia at that time. Most of the help came from our uncle Yitzchak Smeliansky.
Aunt Hanah arrived with her daughter from Alexandrovka , Kamensky district. By sewing, Mother managed to make some money to buy bread. We moved into a new apartment – the landlady Anna Andreevna, whose husband was a priest, had many beautiful icons in her possession. Her house was packed with tenants, one of them Leib Polonsky made ropes for sale. He used me as help. I scrubbed floors, twisted strands when they were making ropes, for that I was given five kopeks a day. A loaf of bread cost 4-5 kopeks back then, I had to work 10-12 hour day for a loaf of bread. Uncle Boris, turned my step-father, worked odd jobs. As life went on we started attending a Jewish elementary school – Cheder.
After that we continued our education in Ukrainian public school. Nuhim, Dina and I were in the same class. I wasn’t as good a student as they were: was often sick, falling behind in my studies. As they moved to third grade I was kept back, left behind to repeat second. Later I managed to make good progress, and even become a better student than they were. We lived in Krylov until 1926.

The year 1926: Shalom Aleyhem farming community

At this time the government started leasing out land lots in the district of Herson, that land formerly belonged to Duce Trubetskoy. Everyone could apply, no restrictions, so Jews began moving there.
Our family picked Shalom Aleyhem farming community of Sedemenuk (Kaliningradsky) district since a good number of Jews had already settled there before us. Every distributed plot of land was identified by a number, ours was 23. We built a house on our lot; the house was made of clay. The Jewish agency from America, Agro-Joint, helped the new farmers with building houses, buying cattle, farming machinery and other common farm equipment. Our big family made a good team, we worked up a sweat together, everybody was kind and supportive. Our plot of land was part of an agricultural community called Shalom Aleichem.
Prior to being named Shalom Aleyhem our Jewish community was called “Ahdus”. We worked our collective land together with other members of the farm, all the families worked together. Our settlement was growing fast, soon we had 57 families, and everybody was Jewish. The soil we cultivated was very good for farming, but water for was scarce. Peasants who lived nearby dug us a pond for collecting water from melting snow. Rainwater was collected there as well. We raised fish in this pond, perch. I used to swim in this pond with other kids. We lived close to Michailovka village populated by Germans. They also raised fish. The Germans were good neighbors; we were on friendly terms with them.
In 1929-1930 the government started the initiative of uniting individual farms into production coops. This form of collective ownerships was called KOLKHOZ; we had to go with the flow. The collective ownership was made complete: all our farming equipment belonged to KOLKHOZ now. They took our horse, we had to give them our cow too, the contribution they expected from our family in crops for planting next season was impossible to make - we did not have as much. Those families who weren’t able to meet the state-set quota for crops were stripped of their possessions and sent to Siberia. Our parents were afraid that if we don’t satisfy the norm for the crops, we would be sent out to Siberia - and that perspective was horrifying. *
It did not make much sense to survive pogroms in Ukraine and then end up being expelled to Siberia where we would certainly not be able to stay alive. We started looking for how to make money to buy crops. Sold it all: chickens, ducks, petty clothes – everything. All that was left was watermelon seeds and melon seeds. Mother managed to keep us alive on those seeds. We survived. Lazar, Isaak and Tzilia left home to look for work in a city, they never returned to KOLKHOZ life. Nuhim was the least fortunate. At first he was hired by somebody in Dnepropetrovsk to do hard labor, later at some point he worked as a dirt digger, building Dneprostroy Dam.
In 1930-1931 I finished seventh grade in Uden public school in Krylov, and left home for Dnepropetrovsk to continue my education. I wanted very much to continue education. I stayed with relatives, did not have any other support, had to provide for myself to get food. Went to look for a job, became a laborer, which made me eligible for food rations. I worked at a vegetable storage facility. The house I lived in belonged to the family of the relative Ilya Ostrovsky. His two sisters lived in America at the time, in Winchester. Besides Ilya’s wife and his son Grisha, Ilya’s mother-in-law, his sister and a brother also lived there. The older woman treated me badly, made condescending humiliating remarks. I brought fruit and vegetables from work and shared with them, but they never gave me any food. Despite all the hardship I applied for studying in FZU DPRZ, and got accepted; group 17C. I remember my teachers’ names: Kononenko, Pavlikov. I studied hard. Rented a place for me to live, a shared room, my rent was higher than my student stipend. To make ends meet I got a part-time job. Had to couple my studies with work. When at last I got a place in a dorm, life got easier. Since I was now living rent-free I could use my student stipend on myself. Isaak and Tzilia, my stepsiblings, who also lived in Dnepropetrovsk never helped me with anything. I went home on school breaks, to be with Mother. While there, I worked in the KOLKHOS every day, earning money for Mother. Was awarded for good work with a pack of goodies: I got a pair of stockings and a quarter of a regular size bar of laundry soap.
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* The plots of land were given out on the condition that the leaseholder would satisfy the government-set amount for the crops the leaseholder was obligated to give back to the state. The norms were almost impossible to fulfill and the leaseholders were left to starve. Those who failed were sent out to Siberia.

The year 1932: famine and eradication of illiteracy

The year of famine. Mother asked me for help, but I was starving also. She came to visit me at the dorm. I borrowed some bread from my friends, gathered 30 pounds of it for her to bring home. As for myself, I made do with the petty rations we were served at the cafeteria at work, plus I was granted to The year of famine. Mother asked me for help, but I was starving also. She came to visit me at the dorm. I borrowed some bread from my friends, gathered 30 pounds of it for her to bring home. As for myself, I made do with the petty rations we were served at the cafeteria at work, plus I was granted to receive small food packages as an outstanding worker. I was a good student.
In 1932 I met Senya Vereshchagin. We got married and I moved to the town of Raygorod. He owned a house with a yard and a garden. I got a job as a schoolteacher. Helped Mother to survive by sending her food parcels. I saved the family from starvation. In 1933 I was assigned to work in Kamenka. Teaching schoolchildren Russian Language and Literature. While working there I took courses and completed a pre-college program in education for school teachers. Same year I enrolled in college in Moscow on the long-distance basis to get a degree in teaching foreign languages. In 1939 I moved to Korsun town not far from Kiev. There I worked as a teacher until 1941. Took part in the country-wide government campaign for teaching illiterate adults to read and write. The campaign was called Likbez, the abbreviation for “Eradication of Illiteracy”, which became the campaign slogan. I was hired by a military recruiting office for this job, worked there until 1941.

The year 1941: war, refuges

Senya was drafted in May. I saw him off, we parted at the entrance to the recruiting office. I waited at the street corner until the new recruits were ordered into a column, headed to the train station. As soon as he saw me, he rushed toward me from the orderly rank. He hugged me, we kissed, and he hurried back to take his place in the column. I have never seen him again. He was stationed in the town Cherkassy. He called me in June, asked me to come to the train station, he knew they would be transported west.
That night from June 21st to 22d I prepared a package for him and went to the train station, spent the whole night there waiting for a chance to see him if only for a minute. It didn’t happen. There at the train station I heard on the radio the government announcement of the beginning of The War, followed by the speech by Molotov. At once my world submerged into darkness. Overwhelmed with fear people gathered around loudspeakers longing for information. The radio broadcasted non-stop the government’s announcement of Germany’s treacherous invasion of the Soviet Union. That was all we were told, that was all we knew about what had just happened to us. In a couple of days we saw army units march through Korsun heading west. Enlisted men were moving in columns, fully dressed in military uniform. The deployment of troops continued day and night, what gave us uneasy feeling was that the solders didn’t have weapons. We gave water to the solders passing by, something to eat. Everybody was in shock, deeply worried for the loved ones. All the men were drafted, only women, the elderly and children remained in the town.
The military recruitment office ordered kids born in 1925 to report for duty. My step-son took off, I didn’t know where he was. The town started receiving wounded from the front line. They were lodged in schools, hotels, resorts, train stations. Along with my friend Betya I volunteered to work at those improvised hospitals, providing basic care to the wounded, took them outside on their rolling beds for a breath of fresh air. I had no information about my husband and step-son. German war planes became frequent intruders in the city skies, bringing fire and destruction. Town residents were put on duty in teams to provide around the clock surveillance.
At the heart of town of Korsun which was located on the banks of river Ros, there was the water dam producing hydroelectric power. Germans, eager to destroy the power station, began indiscriminate bombing of surrounding area. People started to flee. The roads were packed with escaping people. Cattle, which belonged to collective farms was also herded along, local industry packed up the machinery and headed out, joining the town’s emergency evacuation. Train stations were packed with horrified people, cargo trains in great numbers passed by without stopping.
Chaos was everywhere. People are rushing to safety, away from the frontline. On June 26th early in the morning I went to see my friend Betya, as I stopped by their house she was already seated in the back of a truck. When she saw me she exclaimed: “Vera, be quick, get up here, we are fleeing”. I rushed to join her as I was, no time for packing, all I had for the journey was whatever I was wearing that morning. As we were passing some village it started to rain heavily. We made a stop, spent the night at a school building, and left early in the morning to continue our drive east. Our truck was packed with people beyond its capacity, it was moving very slowly – the road was completely crammed with walking people, horse carriages, and carts of all sizes imaginable. On the way we saw farm animals abandoned to lie on the road, exhausted women carrying children, many Jews from Poland in their distinctive attire, elderly people. A very odd mass of people was moving eastward, away from the advancing Germans, away from the frontline.
As we reached Smely the traffic came to a complete stop. While waiting there I ran into our neighbors from Kamenka, asked them to tell my family that I beg them to leave everything behind without hesitation and run away from advancing Germans. That evening we reached Cherkassy. Had to cross river Dnepr. The bridge was wide, made of wood, we were moving very slowly toward it. There was a huge line of vehicles waiting to cross, people, cattle. Betya, her two kids, her husband, Kishnis Misha, and I were clinging together, waiting to cross, and at that moment German airplanes appeared in the sky. Opened fire. Betya was carrying her youngest, I grabbed Acya, the other child, in the darkness I tripped, fell into a gutter – mayhem all around, loud noise, panic, bombing. The enemy planes dropped their death-spewing load and vanished. We returned to our truck.
We all reunited, thanks God, nobody was hurt. Crossed the bridge, and drove toward Kharkov. My sister Dina lived in Kharkov. It did not work out: our truck was rerouted, the roads to enter the city were blocked. Before to the war, Kharkov was a big powerful industrial city, with many manufacturing facilities: plants, factories. Pride of the city - giant Kh.T.Z., Tractor Manufacturing Plant. It was a big city, densely populated. It was expected it would be a bombing target.
We turned back, settled in the town of Valka, in the apartment that belonged to a man whose surname was Kutsmanov. Before the revolution he was an officer in the Russian Army. He later became a deserter. Soon after our arrival I started looking for a teaching job. The job I got was to work as a teacher at children’s daycare center. My meals came from work, so I spent my first salary on clothes I badly needed. Together with the kids in my care I was sent to dig anti-tank trenchers, this was a long assignment - more than two weeks. With the frontline moving fast deeper into the country, the area where we lived felt less safe with each coming day. A dark nerve-racking stream of people fleeing their homes continued day and night. Exhausted women with children, elderly people. There I ran into my former boss, the head of the Military Recruitment Office in Korsun, his name was Doroshenko. His wife was lying lifeless in their carriage, he did not have any money so I shared my petty reserves with him. Also met other former coworkers from Korsun. I knocked on many doors for them, asked my neighbors to help them.