Jews are often called the People of the Book. The book is really a reference to the Torah, the principal book of the Jews. In general, the passion that Jews hold for books is a fact that does not need to be proven. The basis of education is laid in a person's passion for reading books. And this passion remains for life.

And who did not like to read books? When I was a child and in school, everyone read. We had only about a dozen books at home. My parents also loved to read, especially my mother who had worked as a Russian language teacher. My mother went to the district adult library to get books and sometimes took my sister and me with her. As a child, I was impressed by the silence in the library. People spoke quietly so as not to disturb others. Although there were no children's books in this library, we liked to look at the adult books.

I began to visit the children's library when I was in third grade. We were allowed to borrow only three books at a time to take home, but there was a small, cozy reading room where you could sit and read to your heart's content. There was always a line in the hallway, of children waiting for their turn for hard to find books that could not be taken home.

During school holidays our teachers gave us a list of suggested books of literature to read. I usually finished them quickly and then found more to read. By the time I was fourteen, I had re-read everything that interested me in the children's library, and started reading my mother's books from the adult library, where I sometimes borrowed books for myself using my mother's membership. But even that was not enough for me. A book was an idol, a friend and a mentor. There was a cult of books in our family.

I belonged to a literature club in school where we were tasked to do creative writing. This required spending a lot of time in school and children's libraries. We also actively took part in literature evenings held at the school. It was a beautiful book world. .

And what is the importance of books to me now? Today, my home library includes approximately 1,000 books of various genres, written in Russian, Ukrainian, German and Yiddish. I read all of my books more than once. I still like to read, sometimes even on the Internet. Even if my children still read books, I am sure that my grandchildren will definitely not read what I have read. Now, children read much less than we did in the past, because of the appeal of the Internet. But I still love the smell of a new book and to hear the rustle of its new pages.

Yes, in those days, instead of sausage, it was much more prestigious and honorable for all of us to buy a book. There were books all over, in libraries and stores. I was awarded a book at the end of third grade for doing well in school. On the inside of the cover was the written inscription, “For excellent studying and exemplary behavior.”

As it was written in many stories, if we work well and in a friendly manner, if we learn more about what is good and create beautiful things, then it will be possible to make our country one where doing good for others will be the greatest pleasure.

A very interesting Jewish, native resident of Kopaigorod was Meyler Ber Srulyovych ( Borys Israelovych Miller), born in 1913. He completed the seven-year Jewish school in 1929 and went to Kharkiv. He graduated from the Moscow Pedagogical Institute, named after Lenin, in 1936, and was then sent to Birobidzhan where he was the editor of the newspaper Birobijaner Shtern. Since that time his whole life's work had been connected to the Jewish Autonomous Region. Miller's first collection of short stories, called Changes Occur, composed in Yiddish, was published in 1931. His second collection of stories titled Under the Rainbow, was published three years later. Miller's novel, Birobidzhan was published as a single title in 1948. Miller was arrested in 1949. His play, Er z fun Birobidzhan (He is from Birobidzhan) was used as evidence in a criminal case against him. He was accused of being a cosmopolitan and bourgeois nationalist because he had the audacity to write about a group of Birobidzhan youth who went to a regional amateur performance and sang a song in Yiddish while riding on the train. For this song in Yiddish, as well as for the creation of a “criminal group whose activities were directed against the national policy of the CPSU and the Soviet government”, Miller, the editor of Birobijaner Shtern, was sentenced to ten years in prison, in July, 1949. After serving most of his sentence in camps in Birobidzhan, Miller was fully rehabilitated in 1956 by the Jewish Autonomous Region (EAO) regional court due to the absence of a crime in his actions. Shortly after that, his new books, Native Land, Clarity, Full Speed, Each Generation - Its Own, and, As Long as a Man Lives were published.

Miller's collection of poems, The Bright Source, was published during the year of the 50th anniversary of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast. His poems were translated into Russian by the poets Mykhailo Aslamov, Lyudmila Milanich, Roald Dobrovenskyi, Nina Filipkina, Viktor Solomatov, and Leonid Shkolnik. Miller is the author of several plays, including: He is from Birobidzhan, Miracles Do Not Happen, My Beloved's Breath, 33 Heroes, and others. In the literary world this author, Meyler Ber Srulyovych was known as Boozie Miller. He died in 1988 in Birobidzhan. My mother had told me about this writer. She was familiar with his relatives who lived in the town, but over time the stories about him were forgotten.

B. Zhivylko, who was a war veteran and a Jewish woman, was a librarian in the children's library. E. Gelman was a librarian in the adult library. My family often went to the library where there were interesting debates, discussions and lectures about new literature. And even before the opening of the library, we ran on the first working day of the new year, a day during our winter vacation, to get a card number in the top ten.

B. Zhivylko, who was the head of the children's library

Photo of war veterans. The woman standing third from the left is the librarian, B. Zhivylko

There was a library for adults on the second floor, and a library for children on the first floor of this building. When there was still a district, the district finance department was located here.

The artist Y. Bronshtein at work

I will tell you about the farewell of a Jewish man from his hometown of Kopaigorod. At night, when the town fell into silence, Joseph Klekban walked slowly along the deserted street. He walked so slowly, as if to delay time, which at that moment belonged only to him. He stopped, wailed, and shook his head. And when he got there, he sat down on a bench near his house. What shall I do? How to proceed? What is all this for? He asked himself the same question. But he did not find an answer. The house, like his soul, was empty, although his children had long been calling him to live with them. Should he stay here a little longer, a little longer? He swept the yard, neatly stacked some firewood and slowly entered the empty house. And a tear rolled down his cheek. The house was like himself at that moment, silent, but shouting with that silent cry, as if addressing him. Don't go, don't leave us. Tears choked him, but he said quietly: “Goodbye… I… Must… Go…”. He went to Chernivtsi to see his daughter Dora. His second daughter Klara was already living in Austria at that time. Dora studied in the same class with my sister and they were friends. After the eighth grade, she entered medical school, just like my sister. Now Dora lives in Austria. The Jewish writer Haim Melamud wrote the story, Guest from the Other World, about the real events in the life of the Klekban family.

Where else could you meet all the Jews together in Kopaigorod? Either at a wedding or a funeral. Unfortunately funerals took place more often than weddings. After the funerals everyone came to pay their respects to the family of the deceased during the seven days of the mourning period, called shiva. There you could meet all the relatives of the deceased who lived in Kopaigorod and those who came from other cities. There you could see your relatives, and those whom you could not always meet because they lived far away, or with whom one had a quarrel. If someone died in the summer, the whole house and yard were lined with long benches. Funerals were always attended by many people, among both the Jews and non-Jews.

People passing by the other visitors on those long benches were always greeted, except by those with whom there might have been a quarrel. All who were present tried to see who would say hello or not. The gossipy Yahnas were always watching and did not miss a single moment. Everything was a ready topic for discussion in the following days. In order to enter the home of the mourner, one had to pass by those already there, and make small talk about their health, about their husband or wife, about their children and grandchildren, etc. All of this took a lot of time. People who thought they would drop in for 15 minutes ended up walking out after an hour.

One day, a Jew with his wife came to a funeral to say goodbye to the deceased. He came up to the coffin, sobbing, and said, “Give my regards and my love to my brother if you meet him there.” His wife immediately told him: “You'd better give him a bottle of vodka, dan breeder giveyn a shiker” (your brother was a drunkard).

It is tradition to sit shiva for seven days to mourn and remember the deceased. Yes, sometimes he was remembered with a laugh, forgetting at the time that he had died. The Jewish death rituals differ from those of Christians, but the grief and tears remain the same. Men do not shave or cut their hair during the period of shiva. Mourners sit on a low chair or on the floor during the hours that they receive their visitors. They do not work or leave the house and friends or relatives come to help with the household. In addition to these seven days, mourning extends to thirty days for a sibling, child or spouse, but people can leave the house and return to work after shiva. Mourning for parents continues for a full year.

My father died in 1994. My mother called me to come home when my father was close to his death. I quickly traveled from Bar to Kopaigorod to be able to see him. Father died the same evening. He was buried in a shroud although there was also a coffin. Many people came to his funeral. There were already very few Jews in the village, only about 10 people, but Ukrainians also came to the funeral. After all, my father worked as a postmaster for many years and everyone knew him. Then my mother observed the seven days of shiva, and our Jewish friends came to support her in her difficult moment. A year after my father died my mother moved to Bar and lived with us for the next nine years until her death in 2004. During her first year in Bar she went to Kopaigorod for the summer. She had a strong connection with her native town having spent most of her entire life there. Even before she moved to Bar, there was a cat that lived in her parents' house. When mom returned to the town for the summer after 8 months, this cat inexplicably felt her presence, came to her and lived with my mom until she left again in autumn. Before she died, my mother asked to be buried in Kopaigorod. I fulfilled her wishes and buried her in her hometown in January 2004.

When I was a child, my mother would say: “You know, happiness comes in different ways.” I thought, well, happiness is when everything is perfect and good. And only now, years later, I understand her meaning. Happiness is not absolute, it is relative. Happiness is when nothing hurts and everyone is healthy. Happiness is when there is someone to whom you can tell your dreams. Happiness is when there is someone out there who thinks about you. Happiness is when you have a home to which you want to return. Happiness is when your soul is at peace and you arise each morning. Happiness is when your children grow up to be good people. Happiness is when people call you for no reason. And for me now, happiness is a peaceful sky and when people don't die. In fact, there is so much happiness all over, but we wait for it all the time and do not realize that it is nearby.

Our entire mishpacha in Kopaigorod, summer 1989, before Yuchym and his family moved to Israel Photographer Y. Farber

The first so-called holiday parade took place in 1941 in German-occupied Kopaigorod. The fascists drove the Jews out of their houses to the square, not on Lenin Street, but on Shilgos Street (Synagogue Street). The assembly of Jews were not addressed by a party worker, but by the commandant of the town with an “educational” speech, after which they were organized in a column and ordered to move. My mother and other relatives were among the unfortunate ones. The crowd of Jews carried simple bags they were able to quickly pack and attended to their children. There were no smiling faces at this holiday parade, and no music. Instead, one could hear crying, moaning, prayers and shouts of the guardsmen guarding the column. Ukrainian residents stood along the road where the Jews were walking, some with a smile and thinking that they got rid of the Jews and could go and loot their houses, and some with tears in their eyes, because the guards were escorting their friends and neighbors to the concentration camp at Kopay Station. Former prisoners of the Kopaigorod ghetto related their stories about such “parades” in Soviet times, when demonstrations and meetings took place.

And here's how the parades on May 1 and November 7 took place in cities and towns, including Kopaigorod, under raised red flags and the music of the {Communist anthem} International, carrying portraits of Vladimir Lenin and other leaders of the Land of the Soviets, and banners with slogans almost two meters long. Those who were carrying these heavy slogans had to go hand in hand. If one of them did not go straight, they started shouting at each other which looked like a conversation between two deaf people. This is how the Jews in Kopaigorod passed by the reviewing stand where all the leaders of the town were seated. Sometimes my father was also invited to the reviewing stand, but in most cases he refused. As we passed by the portraits of the great Lenin, he seemed to be telling us: “You are walking the right path, comrades!”.

May Day meeting in the town in the 1960's

Photo from the 1950's of a May Day demonstration in Kopaigorod. Hospital workers marching in the front

District meeting of pioneers in the city of Bar in the early 1980's. The Kopaigorod Secondary School is in the foreground.

We had an amateur theater in which Jews and non-Jews acted in plays incorporating Jewish and Ukrainian characters. Yes, it was all in Russian, but Yiddishkeit was felt in everything. The life of Jews in small towns differed from that of assimilated Jews in large cities, or Jews from the Baltic countries or Moldova, the Caucasus or Central Asia. The life of Jews in the former settlement areas was unique in the Soviet Union. The people in the towns preserved Jewish traditions, both religious and moral. There were Jews who wrote songs in Yiddish and sang them at Jewish weddings. These songs were translated into Russian, and then they were sung at Ukrainian weddings to Jewish music. The Jewish musicians were loved by all. And there were local singers who could open a performance before the famous performers, and all of them periodically gave concerts in Kopaigorod. I do not deny any culture, but the real touch of Jewish culture could be felt only in small Jewish towns like Kopaigorod, or Kyparyd in Yiddish.

Kopaigorod evening parties From left to right: M. Grinman, Y. Grinman, S. Feferman, S. Fishylevich, and R. Fishylevich

Yankel Gluzman, a resident and musician who played the violin, established a Jewish drama group consisting of twelve people. They staged plays that Gluzman wrote, including the music. There were two soloists in the group - Zamvl Wasserman and Beila Nishcha. Motl Ostrovsky was the prompter. They spent the money they earned from selling tickets on props for the sets, and part of it was given to the poorest artists. After Gluzman, the group was led by two Flash brothers who came from Mohyliv-Podilskyi.

One of the active cultural workers was Froim Balagur. During the 1950's and beyond, the club was used in the evenings for dances, festivals and school graduation parties. Our club was so good then! A. Shchukina was an artistic director at the club. She was a good leader, and assembled folk and ballroom dance groups. There was a large village choir led by M. Grinman. About ten concerts were held during the year. There were also performances that included the school's teaching staff. There were field campaign teams in the villages. Thematic evenings were held every two weeks by teachers and students.

Where else did people gather besides the bazaar and the park? Of course, on the street. People liked to walk, swap seeds and sit on the ridges. Everyone knew who was getting married, who was born, who died, who and what was cooked and baked around town. The gatherings near the house on the ridge were an important matter. As soon as it became warm and the sun came out, the Kumasi {Ukrainian word for gossiping women}were already fully armed and chatted their tongues incessantly. God forbid you didn't want to give them a topic related to you.

Jews were always singing. At prayers, on Shabbat, on holidays and on weekdays, and in sad moments too. This is the arrangement of the Jewish soul, which is reflected in folklore. The nation, which was doomed to destruction, not only resisted the enemies, but also continued to live an active cultural life. Jews not only sang, but also wrote songs. The song, Buy Cigarettes, was the first Jewish hit. Herman Yablokov, the author of this song, wrote it as a reaction to the suffering of children during the First World War. The most famous Jewish songs were: Sem-sorok (Seven-Forty), Hava Nagila, and of course, Tum-balalaika, and Baybelech (Bageles). Everyone knows these songs, and sings and dances to them even today. Many songs were written by the poet Yakov Yadov (Davydov).

In the early 1990's, every Jewish family was waiting for an invitation to go to Israel or America. But no one told anyone else about their status. There were no secrets in Kopaigorod. The more you hid, the more people knew. Everyone waited for the postman at the gate. No one had ever waited for him like this before. When someone received the long awaited envelope containing official papers allowing them to immigrate to a new country such as Israel, their eyes gave it away, and everyone immediately understood that a crucial document had arrived. Even if a note came from the Military Commissariat, or a telegram from relatives announcing someone's death, everyone still thought it was a visa. At that time, proving something to someone was a futile task.

For the first time in the history of Soviet power inequality appeared: Jews were allowed to leave the country. Thus, Marxist theory unexpectedly agreed with the Torah and recognized the Jews as the chosen people. Plenty of others wanted to leave the Soviet Union also, but they were not released. Who would remain in the party and stand for communism? So, if you wanted to leave, you had to be a Jew or the relative of a Jew, or you had a Jewish partner. And thanks to this, thousands of Jews were able to emigrate from the Soviet Union, and among them, many representatives of other nationalities.

I have come to realize that without understanding life in the past, there can be no future. And it doesn't matter what that past was like. What we are today is the result of our past as the past influenced what we have become. The small-town Jews are proud to have grown up in small Jewish shtetls. Most of us had the opportunity to experience and touch our Jewishness. We were able to understand who we were in this country where being a Jew was difficult. This knowledge may have been incomplete, but it was more developed in these small towns than for the Jews in the big cities.

The Kopaigorod district was liquidated on September 10, 1959 and merged with the Bar district. Some of the Jews left as they were transferred to other districts. My father was invited to move to Shargorod and work as the chief accountant of the post office, but my parents did not want to move. It was then that my father was appointed as the head of the large communications department. After the change of status in the district, the entire volume of postal work remained, but there were no longer administrative services at the post office.

Currently, there are no Jews in the town. Some went abroad. Some went to other cities, some died. The last Jewish woman in Kopaigorod, Dora Kramer, died in 2012. Dora Kramer told a story of how and why she visited Christian churches:

Well, let's say, everyone died from my husband's family. That's how I am, on those days when Ukrainians commemorate, I also go and commemorate. Any person can go to church. My aunt's husband was Polish, and since there was no one there to remember him, I went to church on memorial days to remember him. Even there, the nuns are surprised and say: “She goes to both church and cathedral; if there was a synagogue, she would have gone there.” I say, well, what? I think so long as a person lives, it is not a sin, but on the contrary, it is very good. I even talked to the priest. I went to the chairman of the village council, and our priest was sitting with him, and that's how I met him. I say, I am Jewish, but I go to church to remember. He says: “It's very good of you, it's very noble. For example, I can go to the church and give out such a piece of paper that you write as a prayer for everyone's health. Well, that's how I can list both the Ukrainians and Jews in attendance. I asked if it was possible, they said yes. Then I lit candles there and at the same time I quietly asked God to send everyone health. I believe that there is only one God in the sky above us, and that's all. This is what I do, either for peace or for health, so I am already going, they always know - no one walks, I am alone.” The Jews were immediately indignant: “Dora, how can you go to church, you're Jewish.” I say, “It is not a sin.” As you can see, the local priest approved Dora Yosypivna's initiative to commemorate her relatives in the Orthodox Church. (2001, recorded by O. Belova. Figures of the minister of worship in popular ideas).

Yes, there were various funny stories about how Jews lived in small towns. And when they are gone from these towns, silence stifles the longing to hear a Hebrew or a yidshe vort (word). Now this can only be experienced in a dream. Our synagogue in Kopaigorod still stands as a gloomy monument with hardly any believers around it. Some perished in the fire of the Holocaust, and those who escaped and returned home, went to another world over the years. Who would have thought then that this special religious Jewish shtetl would disappear forever from the face of the earth after just seventy years, and turn from a strip of settlement into a zone of alienation?

  Kopaihorod, Ukraine     Yizkor Book Project     JewishGen Home Page

Copyright © 1999-2024 by JewishGen, Inc.
Updated 01 Jan 2024 by JH