“… I can't catch up my sweet childhood, It remains for me to remember it with sadness…” From the song Childhood by author and composer Sergai Kuznetsov

As I write, I find myself plunging into memories I did not expect to recall as I think about the Jewish streets of Murovani Kurylivtsi and Kopaigorod. Memories that came upon me like a hurricane remain with me. I used to want to run away from people, neighbors, and these memories. I wanted to live in an apartment, not in a house with a toilet outside. I did not want to have a yard with barns, where everything needed to be taken care of. All those years I envied my relatives who lived in big cities and not in a small town where everyone knew everything about everyone else. Yes, later, in Bar, I lived in an apartment with all the amenities, but I could no longer sit in the yard on a warm summer evening and enjoy a sweet apple straight from the tree. In the city there were neighbors, but they were no longer the people who liked to talk about everyone, or who hugged you like family when you were sick. There were no public baths or the bazaar, those weddings and jokes, that aura of Jewishness that was felt in almost everything around you. I know that I can't get it back, but I wish I could be that little guy from Murovni Kurylivtsi or the young man from Kopaigorod again. At least for a little while.

My parents came to Murovani Kurylvtsi in August 1946, when my father was hired as a senior accountant in the district communications office. I was born in the village of Murovani Kurylivtsi, Vinnytsia Region, in 1947. I remember with love and warmth, my childhood years I spent in the town. My parents also remembered their native Murovani Kurylivtsi with tenderness until the last days. Those of us who were born and raised in the shtetls were not only Jews, but townspeople as well. The town of my childhood was a Jewish town. I have lifelong memories of a childhood filled with friends, teachers, neighbors and relatives. The Jewish town was perceived as one big family filled with the joys and sorrows of all its residents. One could hear the unchanging bitter speech, jokes, songs, Saturday frailach in the streets. The Yiddish language was preserved thanks to our shtetl parents and grandparents. We started speaking Yiddish at the same time as Russian and Ukrainian. Our shtetl parents, who did not have a good education due to various reasons, did everything for us to be educated.

There were hard times. There were bad harvests in the country. Farming was an industry that had not yet recovered after the terrible war. It was the period of the third famine in Podillia. The first famine was in the mid 1920's and the second in 1932–1933. My sister and I survived thanks to the efforts of our parents, may their memory be bright.

Our childhood was carefree, fun and kind. Maybe that is why we want to return to that time again and again. Back then, there were no mobile phones or the Internet, so we spent every free minute with our peers on the street. We lived poorly, but honestly and cheerfully. Maybe it was because our parents were young and healthy. The famine ended after 1947. My father said that when he bought semolina at the bazaar, half of it was sand. Such were the realities of that time. My grandmother used to say, “live and you will live to see everything.” So my children have grown up and the trees are big.

I want to focus on the town of Murovani Kurylivtsi. This village is located on the steep banks

of the Zhvan River, 45 km northwest of Mogilev-Podilskyi. The first mention of Murovani Kurylovtsi was in sources from 1492 under the name Churylovtsi. The people of Churylov belonged to the famous Churyla noble family, the coat of arms of Korchak, and according to another version, the Cossack Churylo. However there isn't a clear answer whether the name of the settlement is associated with them, or with another person with a similar surname who may have settled here even earlier. The Churils owned the area for about 200 years. In the 16th century their family built a strong fortress with bastions here, and also in a rather impregnable place above the ravine. Both the walls and vaulted dungeons of the fortress have been well preserved. It is interesting that the construction of the walls was carried out without any mortar. The stones were specially selected and put close to each other, and the stones of the upper level had to wedge into the recesses of the lower ones to fill spaces without mortar, which is the process of cyclopean masonry.

The area was called Murovani in the 16th century after the tycoon Polyanovsky built stone castle walls. From the middle of the 18th century, Murovani Kurylivtsi became the property of the Kossakivskys, but after Katarzyna Kossakivska supported the Bar Confederation, the estate was confiscated from her and given to the loyal nobleman S. Komar, the future Polish marshal. In 1805, Komar built a palace that exists to this day, which includes the earlier castle structures. A landscape park laid out in the 18th century was preserved and reconstructed in 1814 under the leadership of D. Makler . The park is spread out on the left bank of the Zhvan River, which is the left tributary of the Dniester. This river originates beyond the village of Podlisny Yaltushkiv in the Bar district. The park has cascades, grottoes, greenhouses and fountains, and is protected under the status of a park-monument of landscape art. In 1867, the owner of the village was General M. Chikhanov. In 1775, Murovani Kurylivtsi was granted the right to hold two fairs a year on the property. At the end of the 18th century, Jews began to settle here. Since 1861, it has been a parish of Ushytskyi County.

Entrance gates to Murovani Kurylivtsi.

The Market Square, beginning of the 20th century. Somewhere in this area after the war there was a post office where we lived.

The written decision of the Podilsk Provincial Board to change the status of the village of Murovani Kurylivtsi to that of a town

Today in Kurylivtsi there are 3,823 inhabitants of both sexes, including 1,212 Jews. There are 652 yards, of which 444 are owned and 208 are leased. Church – 1 (1787), a chapel built in memory of the holy coronation on May 15, 1883 – 1; Jewish prayer houses - 3. Sugar factory (founded in 1842) - 1; iron-smelting-foundry plant - 1, water mills - 4, shops - 25, artisans - 124. Trade yards - 26 and market days per year - 52. A one-class national school founded in 1863, with 70 students, and a post office with correspondence reception. There is a pharmacy…” (Directory of Podillia province, compiled by V.K. Guldman, 1888).

The sugar factory, photo from 1910

The Ushytsia Zemstvo reported to the Podilsk Provincial Board that there were 78 Jewish houses in the town of Kurylivka that were far from each other and two more unfinished houses (June 12, 1852). (DakhmO. F. 227, op. 1, file 6361). In August 1847, the Ushytsia district surveyor visited the town of Kurylivtsi, where he measured the distance from the future synagogue to the church. This distance was 230 fathoms (a bit more than 420 meters). Before issuing a permit so that construction could begin, the provincial board required the Jewish community to submit a number of documents to issue a permit. This paperwork took several years. In addition, the project was changed slightly. That change was approved in March 1851. The final approval for the whole project finally happened in 1852.

According to the 1897 census, there were already 1,410 Jews living there, which was 34.2% of the entire population of the village. Jews were mostly engaged in crafts and trade and a significant number were involved in the maintenance of the estate and the palace. The sugar factory, rented by Jews, employed a good number of people. In 1861, the Jews had two water mills, four shops, and sixty craftsmen. At the beginning of the First World War, there were four synagogues, a Talmud-Torah school for the poor in the town, and a secret branch of the Bund party. In 1915, the Jews of the town accepted and housed a large number of foreign Jews deported by the tsarist authorities from the front line. In 1919, the followers of Anton Denikin incited a pogrom, accusing the Jews of mass support of the Bolsheviks.

There are documents that indicate that a pogrom against the Jews in the shtetl did not take place on July 6, 1919, as previously stated. There were three separate incidents of pogroms. On the days of June 12-13, a pogrom was carried out by the Bolsheviks, and on June 18-19 and June 24-25, 1919, by Ukrainian troops. V. Vronskyi, the judicial investigator of the special commission of the 1st quarter of Ushytsia County, questioned 109 Jewish victims of the town.

Assignment to the investigator V. Vronskyi to conduct investigative actions regarding the pogroms in Murovani Kurylovtsi

To the Investigator of the 1st quarter of Ushytsa Povit (territory), Vronsky. Special investigation commission to investigate the anti-Jewish pogrom events, on its meeting on August 11, decided to entrust you with the investigation of anti-Jewish pogroms that took place in the town of Murovani Kurylivtsi.

Investigator Vronsky's information about his stay in Murovni Kurylivtsi, September 1919

Act confirming the requisition from the Jew, Korenblit, of 36 boxes containing 1,000 eggs in each, by the 3rd Infantry Division of the Black Sea Regiment in the town of Murovani Kurylivtsi on June 18, 1919.

On August 2, 1925, the newspaper, Communist, wrote about the anti-religious propaganda by Khropko, the head of Murovani Kurylivtsi. He issued an order for the Jews that indicated when the shochet, who was also the butcher, was allowed to slaughter chickens. For example, Khropko was responsible for the following order: “I allow the butcher to slaughter a chicken for the sick Yankel Kartuznyk. Order of Khropko, Head of the District Executive Committee.” Poor chickens. They were slaughtered secretly for a long time, while Khropko interfered in his own affairs.

A Jewish collective farm was created which later united with a Ukrainian collective farm. Accordingly, the Holodomor, the Great Famine of 1932–1933, hit the Jewish peasants as hard as the Ukrainians. In 1941, more than 1,000 Jews, approximately 25% of the total population, lived here. On July 17, 1941, Hungarian and then German military units entered the village. The Hungarians were not particularly cruel to the Jews. In the fall, however, governing passed to the Germans, who created a ghetto, and on August 21, 1942, 2,341 people were shot. They were Jews from the town, from the surrounding villages, from Bessarabia and Western Ukraine. Few were able to escape. For example, father and son Boris and Leontius Gelin, after escaping, were hidden by local villagers. A group of people who got out of the shot pits also managed to escape after the Germans mistook them for dead. Local peasants helped them get to the safer ghetto in Kopaigorod, which was under Romanian occupation. Almost all of those who escaped lived to the liberation.

Some of the Jews were able to escape from the Romanian zone, including the neighboring ghetto in Mogilev-Podilskyi, and from Murovani Kurylivtsi. There were local Ukrainians who transported the prisoners to safer Romanian ghettos. How this occurred is described in the fictionalized documentary story, Memorial Candles. Valentina Mohyla-Shtenart, a participant in the mass execution of Jews, and who was convicted as one of the participants in the extermination of Jews, was the translator in the Murovani-Kurylivtsi commandant's office. She not only prepared all the documents in preparation for the execution, but was also present at the scene of the mass murders. Moreover, Frau Shtenart strode up to the very edge of the pit where people were shot, in order to enjoy the view of the miserable people, maddened with terror, tearing their hair and clothes in despair. Those who miraculously survived later recalled how she contemptuously said the following to the doomed: “Don't tear your clothes, don't cry. It is all in vain. We have a law that all Jews must be exterminated. There is no Soviet power, everyone is dead!” According to the court's decision, the end came later with this executioner's assistant. On February 18, 1948, she was sentenced to 25 years in a labor camp, where she died. This horrible woman was born in the city of Graz in Austria. She was married to the prisoner of war Milentiy Mohyla, and in 1918 the family moved to the village of Kryvokhizhentsi of the Murovani Kurylivtsi district. Before the war, they were both 50 years old and worked as ordinary collective farmers, and had several children and grandchildren. One son-in-law was a senior lieutenant of the NKVD {a ministry of the Soviet government for security and law enforcement}, the other became a police officer. Mohyla's family moved to the city into the house of the Jew Bezborodyk, who had been sent to the ghetto. This house was sold to them for 7,000 marks, but they had no money, so they were allowed to pay 600 marks a month from her translator's salary. After the war, Jewish life in the town began to revive as Jews returned from the war and evacuation, as well as those who survived at the territory of the Romanian occupation.

What is it like now, the Jewish shtetl of the past? It turned out that several blocks of Jewish buildings, never rebuilt or renewed, have been preserved in Murovani Kurylivtsi. In this regional center you can see a real shtetl, but without native Jews. There are several solid blocks of Jewish buildings there which have preserved the entire flavor of the town.

The Jewish quarter today

Jewish houses

Today, local grandmothers remember evening gatherings with Jewish girlfriends in the galleries of traditional Jewish houses. Everyone came with their tasty food. They drank tea, gossiped and sang Ukrainian and Jewish songs.

The mass emigration of Jews began in the early 1990s. They went to big cities, to Israel and other countries. Murovani Kurylivtsi became a village without prospects at that time. Houses were often simply abandoned as it was impossible to sell them. Who needed an old house with cracks, and even without a yard? And it happened so, that it was the depression of the village that saved the Jewish buildings from destruction.

If all this were to be put in order, the village could become one of the centers of Jewish tourism in Vinnytsia region, which is already becoming popular among Americans and Israelis whose roots are from these places.

Tea parties were held here in the summer on a primitive balcony

A Jewish house with a gallery where evening gatherings took place

I think that the hammer and sickle and the five-pointed star are like amulets that were supposed to protect the living. These monuments date back to the 1930's. To understand the essence of these drawings, it is necessary to study in detail who these people were.

Tombstone with a hammer and sickle

And I want to remember a poem by Boris Slutsky:

Five-pointed star with six-pointed star
bet on the Jewish cemetery,
who will shine in the middle of the eternal night...
First came the pentagram,
and Mogendovid defended weakly,
and everything was done in Abram's metrics,
and the financial inspector beat the money changer.
But it is clear that he knows something
and prepares no less ancient and eternal,
locksmith-like Mohevdovid -
all six ends of a six-pointed star.

Jewish religious communities and the number of adherents, as of January 1, 1925 in the Kopaigorod district

Ohel in the cemetery where tzaddiks are buried

My father at work in Murovani Kurylivtsi, in the late 1940's

Excerpt from the order in which Boris Moiseiovych Kuperstein was awarded the title of communications inspector of the II rank

On the assignment of personal titles to the workers of the Ministry of communication of the USSR. Assigned titles established by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the USSR from 13 December 1948, to below mentioned workers of the Ministry of communication of the USSR. Inspector of communication of the 2nd rank to Boris Moiseyevich KUPERSHTEIN- senior accountant of Murovani Kurylivtsi communication office. Minister of communication of the USSR colonel general of the communication troops N. Psurtsev, the chief of the personnel department, Rumiantsev.

My mother, Anyuta Moiseivna Koifman, worked as a Russian language and literature teacher before the war. After the war she worked in the post office. Father had a pistol which was issued to him at that time. Sometimes my father went shooting. I always tried to convince him to take me with him, but that seldom happened.

My childhood was spent here in the village. The first toy I remember was a plastic gun sent to me by my relatives from Moscow. They were my father's cousins who visited us in Murovani Kurylivtsi every year while we lived there. My most favorite place was the radio station. Even though I was kicked out of there, I returned over and over. Since that time I have always had a love for radio technology.

It was only later, in Kopaigorod, that I assembled detector receivers, and later designed various types of radio receivers. Throwing the antenna on a tree, the central radio station could be picked up on the receiver. Radio parts had to be ordered from Posyltorg. The post office had a product catalog and everyone could order the necessary product that was not available in local stores. A kind of online store of that time. The soldering iron and the smoke of rosin brought that unforgettable moment when the voice of some distant correspondent was pouring from the self-made receiver, obviously as enthusiastic as you were.

Volodya, who knew how to build gliders, worked here as a fitter. Not far away was a small hill from which he launched the gliders. It was an indescribable sight. How smoothly his gliders floated on the currents of air, sometimes rising up and then falling down. Later, in Kopaigorod, I tried to design gliders such as these.

The chief's family also lived in the post office. The entrance to our post office building began with a porch. My sister and I, and a boy our age, the son of the postmaster, loved to sit on this porch where we played games. There were benches on both sides of the porch. Sometimes we even prevented people from going inside the building. Many important things took place on this porch. I remember how on summer evenings my mother and I sat there and waited for my father to return from a business trip. When we spotted our father, my sister and I ran to greet him. It was an untold joy to be the first to reach my father and hug him.

We really looked forward to the first snow when winter began. Fragile snowflakes swirled in the air, melting in the palm of my hand, turning into wet droplets. The clean, fresh air tickled my nose, and under my feet lay a soft, snow-white canvas on which I left my footprints. In the morning, there were frosty patterns on the windows. Overnight, the trees donned snow caps on their branches. We ran out into the yard on this snow-white carpet and rejoiced at the arrival of winter.

Parents always decorated a Christmas tree, a pine tree, for us on New Year's Eve, and the tree remained with us until March. We decorated the pine tree all together, with plastic and cotton toys, a glass necklace and a five-pointed star on top. All these Christmas decorations were sent to us by our relatives from Moscow. We were so happy to receive packages from Moscow. Later, my parents invited a photographer to our home, who took pictures of my sister and me near the Christmas tree. In one photo, we stood near the tree holding a net and balls.

In the summer, we played in the large, unfenced yard of the post office. We liked to hide our small treasures in the corners of this yard. At that time, all the children were doing it. You dug a hole, lined it with colored candy wrappers and hid your treasures there. Colored glasses, pebbles, beads and all sorts of things. This was all carefully covered with candy wrappers and then covered with earth. From time to time we showed each other our treasure.

I remember how my father and I carried water from the well. It was a long way from home. Dad carried two large buckets on his shoulders and I also took a small bucket to carry water. My father collected brushwood during the summer to prepare for heating the stove in the winter. Then, after work, he chopped these branches with an ax and stacked them under the tent. My sister Galya and I always helped him, proudly carrying handfuls of small chopped twigs.

I remember the times when Stalin, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union), died. Our parents told us to behave calmly and not to make noise because the country was in mourning for our leader. In later years, my father told me that he had to say that to me at the time. He understood that after the death of Stalin changes were expected, and the era of murdering people for their ideas would finally end.

My grandmother, my mother's mother, Hayka Nutivna Koifman (Iosevych) often came to visit us in Murovani Kurylivtsi. Her arrival was a real holiday for my sister and me. She was a tall, thin woman, or maybe it seemed so to me. We loved her very much and did not take a single step away from her the entire time she stayed with us. My grandmother died in September 1954. I was 7 years old at the time and my sister Galya was over 8 years old. From her autobiography, written in November 1950, I know that my grandmother was born in 1892 in the city of Kopaigorod. Her father, Nuta Hershkovich was a glazier. Her mother was Ita Itskivna.

It is known from the Revizskaia Skazka of 1851 that my great-great-grandfather was a townsman. His name was Haim Hershl Iosevych, his wife's name was Reizya Berkovich. They had two children, Shmil Leib and my great-grandfather, Nuta.

A fragment of a recording from Revizskie Skazki, 1851. Khaim Hersh Yosiovich 41, His sons Shmul Leib and newborn Nuta.

My grandmother's husband, M. Koifman died in 1923. He was robbed and severely beaten by bandits in the area of Shargorod, many of whom remained there after the civil war. After his death, grandmother was left alone with two children. One child died in 1933 during the famine in the village Krasne, where her grandmother's sister took her to help her survive those hard times. She never married again. Before World War II began, she worked as a saleswoman in a grocery store. Grandma was well versed in all matters of Judaism. Jews always turned to her and her sister, Ester Nutivna Hershkovich (Iosevych) for advice.

We often spent our free time in the post office, especially when the weather was bad and we were not allowed to go for a walk. We ran through long corridors making noise, for which we were constantly scolded. And we also liked to play in the pillboxes outside the garden. Our garden was nearby, and while our parents worked there, we enjoyed running around outside, as well as inside the bunker. These were the remains of the Stalin Line fortifications.

I went to the first grade in 1954 in a Ukrainian school, as there were no other schools at that time. I still understood Russian better, so at first school was difficult. My parents told me that after the first bell at school, I asked them for the word pencil in Ukrainian. The teacher said that it should be brought to the first lesson, and I only knew the word pencil in Russian. Pencil is olivets in Ukrainian, and karandash in Russian.

A school in Murovani-Kurylivtsi at the beginning of the 1950's

A long-standing defensive point where we used to play as children

The world of my childhood was filled with my mother's care and love. My mother's influence on me was limitless. Although she was not particularly generous with tenderness, she was ready to sacrifice herself at any moment for the sake of her child. She encouraged us to be honest, decent, and work hard. She had nothing to spare but was always in a hurry to help her neighbors, if not financially, then with kind and intelligent advice. She felt pity for the beggars. She was a person of action in any life situation. However, she was often sad, sitting thoughtfully, picking a spot on her chin. Mom was strong and helpless at the same time, created from grief, orphanhood and courage.

Why do we remember our childhood in older age? Maybe because in childhood you are just starting to learn about the world, you look at everything with open, enthusiastic eyes, you have not yet experienced disappointments, losses and the pain that is felt in adult life. As a child, you are cheerful, fast, easy-going, with a full life ahead. Childhood is also like a blank sheet on which events are just beginning to be recorded, one after the other.

In January 1955 my father was transferred to the town of Kopaigorod as the chief accountant at the post office. This is the place where in 1944, immediately after the liberation of the village from the occupiers, he organized postal, telephone and telegraphic communication in the district. In addition, we had our house there which remained after the death of my grandmother. We collected our household items in preparation for our move, and on a frosty winter morning, we set off on the road to a new life and new friends. After that I passed through my childhood village of Murovani Kurylivtsi only a few times over the years. My memories preserve my past in this town even though it is impossible to return.

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