I never had a meat grinder! When I got my first salary here in the U.S., I went out and bought myself one.
I never had a meat grinder! When I got my first salary here in the U.S., I went out and bought myself one.
I was the little parcel on the way, but we don’t know for sure whether I was conceived in Russia or in Austria.
There was no Home Depot in Kiev in the ‘70s, so we had to slip something to someone under the table, and lumber would disappear from a construction site.
In Georgia there were only about 10 Jewish last names, so it was fairly easy to tell who the Jews were.
We were the refuseniks. Then one day we got the official letter with our permission, but we had to leave within 2 weeks.
They took my mom and me aside to a different room, where they searched our things, and of course they found the bag of jewelry and threatened to call the police.
My dad was literally yelling at the scale, “48 kilos! We have room for 2 more kilos!”
My great-great-grandfather was such a special rabbi in his time, and we do this to create mementos of him.
I remember asking my parents whether I could pack a suitcase full of toys...
My dad was a nuclear physicist. He also wrote poetry up until he passed away in 2001.
So we started our life here with furniture from the garbage, but we had pots and pans, fine china, and every imaginable kitchen utensil!
These pots! Imagine, having to haul these heavy pots with us on the plane!
It reminds me of the weekends I spent with my grandparents in their Moscow apartment and how we’d have tea from it every morning.
Really, we are a new generation of immigrants. The earlier waves are the true immigrants. They knew they were never going back.
She had a very big family with ten siblings, and most of them were buried alive during the war.
