Soviet Jewish Oral History Project Western Reserve Historical Society Interviewee: Isay Auguston Interviewer: Lisa Powers Date of interview: July 14, 2014 Location of interview: 2020 Taylor Road, Apartment 209, East Cleveland

LISA POWERS: Today is July 14th, 2014. I am Lisa Powers and I am here with Isay Auguston in his apartment on Taylor Rd, East Cleveland. Isay, thank you very much for letting me interview you! I want to ask you a few questions so you can share your experience emigrating and adapting to this country. Tell us where you were born, who your parents were, whether you consider yourself Jewish!

ISAY AUGUSTON: The fact is, telling someone’s biography and episodes from their lives is very interesting, but I would be happy if my interview helped young people make use of my life’s experience and the unusual paths it’s taken.

LP: I understand. So, tell us briefly about your family!

IA: My father was a mechanic, my mother, a homemaker. I was the only child in the family. We lived in Riga [Latvia], but I was born in , Estonia, so I also know Estonian. On around June 10th, 1941, right at the start of the war, I went to Young Pioneers [translator’s note: A summer camp for children operated by the Communist Party] camp, which was 60km from Riga.

LP: How old were you at the time?

IA: Somewhere around 17. I was a camp commander. I had no idea of these things at the time, but there was already the Soviet regime, and they appointed everybody who didn’t steal and was honest. On June 27th, the war started. I was far away and didn’t know about it. The entire camp of 500-600 children was evacuated then by the Central Council of Trade Unions, and I was getting ready to go home, but I couldn’t already —everything was blocked off. I couldn’t return home and didn’t know what was happening with my parents. It was only in 1943, while I was on the front, that I happened to read a message from the Jewish Agency in New York, which said that all of the inhabitants of occupied Latvia were exterminated. I was very crushed, and I did not know what to do, and I decided to take revenge on Germany. But alone, there was not much I could do—the entire army was fighting against them, and even they couldn’t manage. In those same days, I read another notice, which said that the Institute of Foreign Languages was calling for everyone interested in an education. I decided to take revenge on Germany by not letting them break my will and by continuing my education, in spite of the firefights and whatever else—this was my hobby. I wrote to the Institute, and they politely answered that, if I was demobilized and lived in Moscow, then they would accept me, but nobody was being called back from the front. Then I went to the command of my division and asked for assistance. They wrote that, in the entire division, there wasn’t one person who spoke another language, even German—we were at war with a country and did not know its language. They also guaranteed

1 that nobody [there] would be able to help me with my education. That is how, as an exception, I was given permission to enroll without documents—I didn’t have any of my documents, or knowledge of English. They decided that if a soldier was going to study hard and pass everything, then he would be considered a student, and if not, then they would drop him—they had nothing to lose. Every month, I received a special brochure, which I had to send back immediately within two weeks. There were questions in the brochure, and articles, and after two months, I would have to take an exam. I didn’t have the brochures, I didn’t have a copier, I didn’t have paper, and I didn’t have a dictionary, either, but I had to take the exam. I came to the conclusion that I needed to know everything by heart; there was nothing else to do and nobody to ask. I had to study a lot, which was extremely difficult. They didn’t like foreign languages in the —you were considered a spy if you learned them. I was in the Latvian army, which was half Jews and half Communists. This was a very brave and combative division. We fought near Moscow, and there is a memorial there to this day, and my things are in a local museum, also. After two injuries, they sent me to the Russian region, and I immediately understood that I needed to hide my intelligence, because my entire troop had an education up to 3-4th grade. The troop captain, Firyulev, had only a 5th grade education. He was wonderful at fighting, orienting himself, and was an exceptional shooter. I could not reveal that I studied English, because I would have seemed like an obvious spy to everybody, which would have led to immediate SMERSH [translator’s note: SMERSH is a Russian acronym that stands for “Death to spies” and refers to three counter-intelligence agencies in the ]. Only the division’s high command knew that I was studying. Somehow, I needed to manage everything at once. During breaks in the fighting, I wrote out words. There was no paper, but I had pieces ripped from newspapers and various books that I found. I wrote out words between the lines and folded it all in my pocket, but when to learn all of these words? There was constant bombing, so I studied when I stood guard at night. I was young and desperate then—I had good vision, and I wasn’t afraid of anything. I stood at my post, kept watch on everything I needed to keep watch on and worked on my studies. I gave myself a rule to learn 25 words a day. I counted the words on my fingers. One time, I made it to 18 words, and past that, I just couldn’t remember. I cracked my brains for a long time and couldn’t think of anything. It was already time for a change of guard, and my replacement came. I decided that I wouldn’t go—though I wanted to sleep very much—until I remembered the 19th word. I stepped to the side, into the woods, and started thinking. That’s how I forced my mind to check 25 words every night.

LP: You have exceptional willpower!

IA: How did I ever see at night, if I didn’t have a light or matches? At the time, I remembered that I’d read Gorky as a child, where he’d described, in an interview just like this one, what he did in these situations when he was little. He very much loved to read. He was very poor, and at 10 years old, he worked as a substitute chef’s assistant on a barge. He managed to read, even though the chef really didn’t like him reading, and hit him with a ladle over the head for it. Then, Gorky decided to read at night. He took a pan, went to the edge of the broadside, polished up the bottom of the pan and, using the reflection of the moon, read “Montigomo, The Hawk’s Claw.” I made use of his experience. You could get plenty of pans from the ravaged farm collectives, but there was nowhere to put them. Such contrivances were also considered to be

2 signs of a spy—SMERSH was with us constantly, sniffing around, checking and going over everybody. I needed to find a way out of my position. The point of my interview now is to show that you always can and must find a way out of a [difficult] position, even, for that matter, with unusual methods. If I couldn’t use a pan, then I needed something small. What could it be? I had everything I needed—I didn’t think of it right away. It was the Kalashnikov. It has a circle that can be polished up and it will shine. For damaging military property, I would be under threat of immediate shtrafbrat [Soviet penal battalions] and death. I needed to find a way out of my position. There was fighting every day. Once, the fighting was very bad—it was a very large field and tons of people lying dead with their weapons. You could take a rifle from one of the dead. I couldn’t go in the daytime, and it was risky at night, too, since they could see me and open fire, because if I was walking there, then it meant that I wanted to surrender. Ultimately, I risked my life to learn English. When my friend replaced me at my post, I seemingly went back, but really made a semi-circle and, crawling on my belly, moved in the necessary direction. I made it to the nearest dead man, took his rifle, told him “Thank you!” and headed back. It’s possible that I moved too loudly, because the duty officer heard a rustle and called out, “Halt!” I fell silent and didn’t say anything. He fired a shot in my direction. I lay face down deep in the snow, like a dead man. The Germans heard the shot and also fired their own. And everybody was shooting in my direction. I lay in the snow for a long time, not feeling my hands, my legs, my nose, until the firing stopped. Then, I kept moving and reached my own people, where I shouted to the guard, “It’s me! Don’t shoot!” The duty officer was glad, and he cursed me using profanities in full military fashion [in original: выругал меня пятиэтажным армейским матом]. I had a rifle in my hands, and now I needed to explain it somehow, so they wouldn’t think anything of it and wouldn’t rat me out. So, I said to him, “Look, I brought you a rifle!” “I didn’t ask you for anything!” “This will be our rifle!”—we had a group of four people who stood at our post. “We’ll go to our post with this rifle,”—once a week, our captain would check our rifle barrels for cleanliness, because they often got dirty. “When our rifles are caked in dirt, we’ll use this rifle at our post.” A week later, our commander raised everyone for an inspection and inspected the barrels—all were clean. He praised us and increased our porridge ration. The next week, everything was clean again, and he praised us again and set us up as an example to the other platoons. All of us kept our mouths shut then and understood that I had done us a big favor. Of course, this did not solve all of my problems, but, at the very least, now I could read, study, and do something. Years passed, and I had already finished my second year. We arrived somewhere and started to dig. We needed to make trenches and a large hole for an anti-aircraft gun. We worked a lot then. We could move only at night, because the Germans watched everything through their binoculars. Suddenly I saw a soldier being led along, a German captive. I was curious. The law was such that a soldier didn’t have the right to take a single step away from his position—we didn’t even know which military unit was stationed right next to us. Everything was top secret. Still, I went out and started talking to this soldier in German. It turned out that he was a French volunteer, and he didn’t want to fight anymore and wanted to surrender. I, as a Jew, wanted to learn everything from him: the layout of the front, and other military details. I talked to him, headed back, and continued digging. Not ten minutes passed before my troop captain shouted, “Auguston, come here!” I came over. “What did you do?!” “What did I do?” “You talked to the German?” “Yes, I talked to him.” Nobody was allowed to talk to captives except SMERSH. “The general is calling for you!” I went to the general. Everything

3 there was destroyed, full of soldiers—they had just liberated this place. Someone called out to me, “Stop! Where are you going? Who are you?” I answered that I was going to see the general. Some officer came up to me and said, “You’re Auguston? Come here!” I thought that they were going not to threaten me with SMERSH, but with being shot on the spot, since, if I had talked to a German, then I must have passed along some information. I was led to a vault covered in canvas. A candle was burning here. The general was sitting there in a greatcoat. He seemed sick. He said to me, “You spoke with the German?” “Yes.” “Oh! We need you!” Now, I understood that they were not going to shoot me. “The thing is, we had a hard time catching a German soldier. We lost five of our best scouts here. We can’t find out the location of the front. We need to interrogate the prisoner, but nobody knows German. To question this German, we’d need to take him to the district headquarters, where there is a translator, a girl who speaks English, but while all of this goes on, two hours will pass. Time is the most crucial right now, and we need to obtain the necessary information immediately. Can you translate?” “Yes.” “Bring the prisoner!” I helped him carry out the interrogation. I went out, and somebody called to me again, “Stop!” I thought that now they would definitely want to shoot me, but a couple minutes later, they brought me a large army container of stew. This was more than the ration. When I came back to my section with the antiaircraft gun, they were already pulling up the stakes. It turned out that the general had learned that the Germans had left this position, and gave the command to advance immediately. Right away, we advanced about ten kilometers, saving ourselves a lot of time and lives. When I came back, the captain asked me, “Well, what did you do there?” I told him. After this, there were no more questions about me. When the container with stew appeared, everyone immediately dropped their preparations for evacuating, immediately opened it with a bayonet, and ate everything up. They praised me, and now I became the “intellectual at the front.” I became a translator.

LP: You were learning two languages then: English and German?

IA: I already knew German before then, along with a few other languages. I loved learning languages. I also knew Latvian, which nobody spoke at all, since this was the Russian region. I was given two people with rifles and we went to check on a farm, to see if there were any Germans there. I spoke in Latvian, and everybody opened their doors to me. This was good for the army, but not for me, because everybody else slept, but I didn’t. Everything positive has its negatives. Also, we had a special unit that was engaged in a search for bandits and partisans. Every night, I was called out, and I had to go to a familiar farm, get a horse, and ride the horse wherever they told me to go, to help communicate in Latvian. My knowledge of languages frequently saved the situation. On May 9th, I was on duty as an operator, and I was the first one to hear on the radio that the war had ended. The commander of the unit woke up, cursed me out, and went back to sleep, and half an hour later began a barrage of gunfire. We were stationed on the border with Latvia. Nobody could understand what was happening, and in the end, it turned out that everybody had already learned that the war was over and they were shooting in the air. One other time when knowing German bailed me out: we were stationed in Latvia, at the so-called “Kurzemskiy Bag.” [Kurzeme, a district of Latvia] My officer gave me an order: “Tomorrow, at 12 noon, you’ll go with our officers to the German front, and they’re going to surrender.” I went there—it was a simple village hut, a simple wooden table, a switchboard

4 on the table. A German general and officers were there, and I was there when they gave the order to surrender. I personally accepted the surrender of German forces in that area. By the way, there were one million Germans in the “Kurzemskiy Bag.” They purposely were shooting our troops who were going to Berlin in the back, but they didn’t succeed. I was very interested in the German switchboard there. The next day, I went to the person who had it and asked him for this device. He gave it to me, since he didn’t need it, and I put it in my knapsack. So, that is how I saved the final signal of the end of the war, and it is now in the school museum.

LP: What was your fate after the war?

IA: Many different things happened after the war. People usually say that Jews didn’t fight in the war, and were all waiting in safety in Tashkent [Uzbekistan]. Here is a living example sitting before you who can decisively refute all of these detestable deceits. I have enough medals after the war, but I don't brag about this. More than all of these awards and medals, I value this paper: a military record of my military unit, issued in 1945. In the record it says, “Isay Auguston, an ethnic Jew, went willingly into the army and battled the German invaders until 1943. In 1943, he was wounded, underwent treatment and, after 1943, came here. He excellently learned complicated anti-aircraft technology and skillfully applied it in combat. In battle with the enemy, he showed himself to be brave, self-possessed and disciplined. His conduct inspired not only the soldiers, but also the officers.” The last phrase pleases me most of all.

LP: Who wrote this paper?

IA: The commander of my military unit. When I was demobilized, they gave me this record.

LP: It’s written in Russian?

IA: Yes, this was a Russian military unit. This is the most important document for me, which lets everybody know that I did not disgrace myself in service.

LP: It is surprising to me that they wrote “an ethnic Jew,” and not just “a brave and courageous man.”

IA: That’s the entire point. May everyone know that there were those who even inspired the officers! Everybody was a hero. Any veteran of the war, I consider a hero. After the war, I organized and created many things, and all of my accomplishments are confirmed on paper. I saved all of the newspapers and other such materials. A few examples: “Worked as a school principal for forty years; established five school museums in Latvia.” If you’d like to know about any of my accomplishments, I can prove everything by submitting along these documents.

LP: This whole list will go in our archives. What expressions of anti-Semitism did you come across after the war?

IA: I encountered anti-Semitism everywhere and all of the time. Many times, I had to “fight

5 windmills” with the Party’s district committee, with the Central Committee. At that time, fighting with the Party’s district committee was deadly. Everything happened behind closed doors—nobody pointed their finger at the fact that I was a Jew, but you, as person who lived in the USSR, know that in the Soviet Union, schools were not being closed, but on the contrary, opened. I was a director of a school from the first days after the war. After the war, my school was closed three times.

LP: Why did it happen in your case?

IA: First of all, because of my “fifth paragraph,” [ethnicity was stated on the fifth line in a Soviet passport]; second of all, because my school was too well-endowed and we needed to pass on our good and well-organized school with good kids to the Latvian school, because they had a large shortage of pupils; it also happened that they left me as the director of the school, but took all of the students; then, they gave me the 24th evening school—they needed to develop a good directorate and organize everything well. I built up this school, and they took it away from me again, to give it to the Secretary of the Communist Party’s wife—they closed the school a year later, because she had let it all “come loose.” They told me after this that I was a good organizer and asked me to build up another school. I declined and started working as a teacher and succeeded in getting a lot of things done since then: I participated in an international competition in Hungary and on the history of World War II; I organized assistance for new African nations, like Ghana, for example. In 1965, new African states were formed, and in the Soviet Union, which cared so much for the friendship of nations, nobody thought of how to organize assistance for the new states. So I, a Jew, a school director from Riga, organized help for Ghana. How? With notebooks, pens, paper. This event is recorded in a photograph, in a newspaper and in related documents. Notebooks were very cheap, and each student brought me ten notebooks. After the war, I was given the most terrible school—broken down and full of hooligans. Why? Schools then were for boys. [RECORDING INTERRUPTED]

LP: Let’s continue. What would you like to add about your post-war life before emigration?

IA: I would like to say something for the youth. This is also related to the question of unusual solutions. The question is this: is it possible to create a textbook of a foreign language if you don’t speak it? It is! I created an Armenian language textbook, not having any idea about [the language].

LP: Tell us briefly how you managed that!

IA: I’ll show you this textbook. You’re the first person who will hold this extraordinary exhibit of the war. Creating it was simple. After the war, I didn’t know what to do and I didn’t know where my parents were. I didn’t want to go to Riga anymore after the war. I had been used as a scout, because I knew languages. I went scouting together with my friend, an Armenian, Avionic Avitosyanov [translator’s note: spelling unconfirmed]. We always went scouting together. He was a brave person. I was downcast and told him that I didn’t want to go to Riga after the war. He said, “Great! Then come to me after the war!” I liked this idea: Armenia, warmth, mountains.

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The next day, he said, “I have a sister, she’s 14 years old. You’ll marry her.” “What are you, crazy? She’s a child!” “It’s okay. The war is still going on, and when it ends, she will be 16 years old, and it’ll be possible to marry her.” “Well, alright. Honestly, I’d like to meet the person first, and not just arrive and say, ‘I’m your groom!’” “It’s okay. That’s how things work with us—if your older brother tells you to marry, then you must marry.” I agreed to this, but later, I said, “You know what, let’s do something else! How about I get introduced to her first, and we’ll write to one another during these years! People also get to know each other by writing, after all.” I sat up all night and painstakingly wrote a love letter to an unknown girl who was 14 years old. The next morning, I showed him the letter: “It won’t work!” he answered. “What do you mean, it won’t work? Look at how well I wrote everything!” “She doesn’t know Russian.” What kind of marriage could there be in this case? We thought for a long time about what to do and, finally, he said to me, “Learn Armenian!” I didn’t know how I could do this without textbooks and other necessary things. That’s how this textbook was created—every day, I asked him in Russian for words and carefully wrote them down—I no longer had to hide then. The problem was that there was no paper, and we searched for it in ravaged farm collectives, in the accounting offices. Among the scattered things, you could always find some accounting records, which you could write on. I made little books like this, sewing them. That’s how I made ten booklets. Eventually, I started learning the language and speaking in it. Soon, I freely spoke Armenian. I’ve already forgotten this language now. We have one Armenian living here. He happened to come up to me, and I showed him this textbook. He was amazed. He said, “You are my best friend!”

LP: So you went to Armenia after this?

IA: It was 1944. After one defeat of our troops, my Armenian friend was wounded, and he was taken away. I didn’t know his address or whereabouts. I wrote to the television station in Yerevan [Armenia], and they said that they had as many Avitosyanovs there as we had Ivanovs in Russia, and they couldn’t do anything to help. So I lost him.

LP: So you returned to Latvia?

IA: Yes, I returned, but I didn’t know anything of my parents. There was a very interesting story with my mother. We lived very happily together before the war, in a communal apartment with two Latvian women. When I came after the war, the room was empty, and one of the women told me that my mother and father had been taken away and killed.

LP: But nobody moved into the apartment then?

IA: No, not yet. I had gotten permission to go to Riga for ten days. I stayed there for three days and then left, leaving this woman with my military mailing address and a few pieces of soap [sic], so that she could give them to my mother if she suddenly came. I felt that she must be alive. Time passed. On October 13th, 1944, we liberated Riga, and that same day, I was already in the city. After the war, our troops were immediately sent to Japan. We didn't know about this. All our troops went through Latvia to Estonia, through Estonia to Leningrad, and from there, to Japan. I knew Estonian well. All of the officers had the right to call for their wives after the war.

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We were stationed [in Estonia] for a long time: June, July, August and September, too. Everyone thought that we were already there for permanent residence, and started settling in—nobody knew that we were going to Japan. Settling in was not that simple. The wives came, but there was nowhere to put them, only move them in with Estonians. And for that we needed to speak Estonian, since they didn’t know Russian—this was the Haapsalu resort. Up until a certain moment, nobody knew that I spoke Estonian and they could use me to translate, but, once, when we crossed the border of Latvia and Estonia at night and stopped for the night, two Estonians appeared before me, and I spoke to them in their language, and asked them to let us spend the night there. Then everybody found out that I also spoke Estonian. But now, my position was already somewhat different—I had started working in the headquarters, and was no longer at a post. Being a translator was an honor—I went and interacted with many Estonians, and they trusted me. I guaranteed that they would have a regular woman living with them, that they would be paid, and they would be protected. They agreed, and many wives came.

LP: And then you moved to Latvia?

IA: Yes, then I moved to Latvia. On the way to Japan, I had received a letter from my mother—a postcard, telling me that she had arrived, she had nowhere to live, and she was sleeping on the floor. She asked me to come. I couldn't do this, since I “led the parade.” I showed my commander the letter and explained my situation, asked to leave for two or three days. In the end, he let me go for a month.

LP: How did your mother manage to survive?

IA: I met up with her. I didn’t get the apartment, because when the war ended, the headquarters of the Baltic Military District was located in Riga, and one of the main officers, the director of the headquarters for food distribution, took our room for his needs, and I, a simple soldier, was not allowed in. When I came there, they sent me away. I was, after all, a hardened soldier at the time. I immediately went to the military prosecutor’s office and told him the entire situation, and got a document ordering that the residence be immediately released. So I got our room back. If I hadn’t come or if I had been killed, then my mother would have known nothing of me. My father had died. Only then could I learn everything from her. She told me everything, and I recorded her stories on a disk. My mother told me many interesting things. I passed along these stories to many historical organizations and archives. I think there were such stories there that everybody needs to know. I had my own history, but everything with mine happened the opposite way. It turned out that my father’s tallit and the tallit that I wore on my Bar mitzvah at thirteen years old were in my mother’s possession. This was impossible, because she had been in the ghetto for a long time. It turned out that this tallit had been preserved by the family of a famous Cuban Gauleiter—a bandit and, at that time, “the Commander of Belarus,” who was killed in the end by partisans. He was all-powerful, and in his time, killed one million Belarusian Jews. This tallit had been preserved in his apartment.

LP: Which ghetto was your mother in?

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IA: She was in the Riga ghetto, and later she was moved to Germany. In the last minutes, when the Germans were fleeing, they didn't have time to exterminate all of the Jews, about 1,500 people. They put everybody on barges and took them by sea to Stutthof, where they did exterminate them. My mother was on one of the barges, and she told me horrible things. A small tugboat pulled the barge, and there was one more barge tied on to it. The sea was raging, and the tugboat couldn’t pull anymore. Finally, the captain decided to cut the second barge loose, and it sank. My mother heard the howls and screams of terror of those people, who were drowning in front of their eyes, and [the captain] drove everybody else on toward their death. I am still searching for people who were on this barge. This situation was also resolved in an unusual way. I found a person who was with my mother on the barge, here, in our city. You probably know his name: Semyon Magaram. He was in the ghetto. He was 14 years old at the time. He and I got to talking, and it turned out that he was also on this barge. From this, the same conclusion always follows: one can never lose heart and give up, but must keep going to the end and keep searching.

LP: What prompted you to emigrate?

IA: But I haven’t told you yet about what I did in Riga.

LP: Okay, let’s continue!

IA: I published my first book: “The Wounds Scar — The Pain Remains: A Book of Remembrance,” This book names close to a thousand of the dead’s actions at the fronts of Latvia, their names, dates of death and places of burial. This is a very original book.

LP: How did you find all this information?

IA: Yes, I had to sit at the archives.

LP: Did you compile all of this while in Latvia?

IA: Yes, after the war, I worked on this. This book is the only one of its kind, and nothing else was published in Latvia about the war at home.

LP: For the most part, the Jews listed here lived in Latvia?

IA: Yes, they’re members of our division. For the fiftieth anniversary of the victory, Moscow published another one of my books. The thing was, 500,000 Jews fought in the Soviet army, but there were only 25 Jews were mentioned in the Soviet Union. After that, I organized the first Jewish school in the Soviet Union, in Riga, on September 1st, 1989. I was the deputy director of this school. A note: all Jewish schools in the Soviet Union were shut down in 1937, and in Latvia, in 1940. The cultural workers were killed, we know how. There were no Jewish schools, people were afraid to speak Yiddish in Moscow—people were being jailed for this, and here, the first

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Jewish school was being opened in 1989, when the Central Committee was still around. This was highly unusual. There were no students, or premises, or teachers, only a burning desire and two-three people.

LP: What was the Jewish population of Latvia after the war?

IA: Before the war, there were around 100,000, and 80,000 of those were exterminated, 20,000 ran to the Soviet Union, and about 5,000 came back from the evacuation or the army. In the 1960s, engineers, technicians, etc. began arriving—Jews from the Soviet Union. That is how, in Latvia, there were 18,000 Jews by the time I left. But there were no Jewish children, as such, because nobody spoke the Jewish language. I was the organizer of the first Jewish War Veterans Committee, which consisted of 508 veterans. In Cleveland, there was a committee of war veterans, but it doesn’t exist anymore, though there are still 50-60 veterans. I actively participated in creating the first Jewish community in Latvia and I was a part of its machinery. I participated in organizing the first festival of Jewish culture in the Baltics in 1989—at a time when you couldn’t even speak the word “Jew.”

LP: But many started leaving in 1973. Was the situation different in Latvia?

IA: No, we just needed to get all of them together. Rabbis came from Estonia, Lithuania, Denmark, Sweden—we needed to get them all together, give them places to stay and take care of everything. I created the basis for the creation of the first museum of Jewish history in Latvia, by gathering up my documents and other materials. Now, this museum is considered one of the most distinguished in the Jewish world. Over 120 articles on pedagogy and educational achievements have been published about my activities in Latvia. These articles were published in Latvia, in Moscow, in Germany, Israel, Denmark, Sweden. Also, I received 117 certificates of merit for my involvement in community work. Speaking of which, I have all of the newspapers in my possession, and you can look at them. I gave materials to the National History Museum of Latvia, the Latvia Anniversary Calendar, the Latvian Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities, and the Holocaust Museum in Riga. I have [letters of] gratitude from different organizations: the [Holocaust] Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, the Cleveland Public Library. I am also an honorary member of several organizations in the United States of America. I received certificates of merit from: the Marshal of the Soviet Union, [Leonid] Govorov; the hero and the commander of the Leningrad Front, Maltseva; from the Baltic Military District, for organizing the history museum in the school; from [Colonel] General Batov; from the Military Council of the Kaliningrad Front; from the President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev; from the Central Committee of the Red Cross of Latvia; from the Supreme Council of the Republic of Latvia. Now, for my activities in the USA after moving on September 7th, 1996--

LP: What prompted you to move?

IA: My children moved.

LP: Was it initially your children’s’ decision?

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IA: Yes, they came earlier. We arrived in 1996, and they did in 1993.

LP: How many children do you have?

IA: Two, my daughter, a chemical engineer, and my son has a doctorate of Mathematical Sciences.

LP: Are they in Cleveland?

IA: No, but they’re in America and teach in American universities.

LP: Did they come to Cleveland first?

IA: Yes, though now, they live in other cities.

LP: When you came to Cleveland, did anybody help you, other than your children?

IA: Nobody. But I would like to express my gratitude to Rabbis Zaygin and Rebbetzin. They invited me to the synagogue and, on Sundays, I had the opportunity to tell some stories and talk to somebody. I lived nearby and could walk there.

LP: Where did you live?

IA: In the “musical home.” [Translator’s note: Musicians Towers, an affordable housing community with many Soviet senior citizens, who called it the “musical home”; in the Coventry neighborhood.] Aside from these people, nobody particularly helped us. I didn’t have any acquaintances.

LP: What was your status when you came to America?

IA: Refugees.

LP: And you didn’t get any support or guidance from “Jewish Resettlement” service?

IA: No, we had only a mentor at the time, Lana Naku.

LP: But it is the Jewish community who brought you in?

IA: Yes, they brought us in and helped us orient ourselves, but in terms of my community work, I did everything independently.

LP: Well, I got a sense of your community work. I am curious to know who helped you to start your life in Cleveland.

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IA: That all happened through the Jewish Federation. We also pay the Jewish Federation every month.

LP: Did they help you when you arrived—provided an apartment?

IA: No, we found the apartment and did it ourselves.

LP: How did you do this?

IA: There’s a telephone book, and in that, I found and called organizations that can get an apartment. Our first apartment was in the “musical home” [Musicians Towers]. First, we had to live there for a year and pay the full price. We received SSI at the time, and were paid $323. Then, we got in line for Section 8. I received a list of buildings that rented apartments through this program.

LP: How did Jewish Family Services help you to settle in Cleveland?

IA: They gave us a lot of advice, went with us to the Welfare office, once we were put on a roll there. Then, they went with us when we submitted our documents for citizenship. I, personally, have nothing bad to say about them.

LP: So, do you have any specific names that you would like to mention?

IA: Only Lana Naku, our mentor.

LP: Was she a representative from Jewish Family Services?

IA: Yes.

LP: Do you have any relatives left in Latvia?

IA: Nobody, only graves.

LP: Was it difficult for you to get permission to leave?

IA: That was easy. My daughter finalized everything, sent applications [to America], and in Moscow, they gave us a refugee status quickly.

LP: What difficulties did you face when you moved here?

IA: I had none, but my wife had difficulty with the language.

LP: What impressions did Cleveland make on you when you came?

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IA: We liked Cleveland, because the city is very green, quiet, peaceful and calm. There were a lot of good people here, many of whom have already passed away to the other world.

LP: Have you found friends here?

IA: Yes, very many.

LP: You don’t experience nostalgia?

IA: Me—no; only my wife. More than half of my friends are Jews like us, and the rest are African Americans. I immediately got involved in community work here. I couldn’t sit idle. Having come to an unfamiliar country, having no connections, no money, I managed to publish a magazine called “War Veteran.” There was a big veteran’s organization here, numbering 150 people, now 50. There were no magazines like that in Russian at the time. In the end, I found one other guy, who also knew how to write, and made this magazine. There was paper, there were copy machines. All that remained was to do it. We put out 200 copies of these magazines.

LP: What funds did you have?

IA: There were no funds or financial support. We published these magazines for 10 months in a row, and when I asked for $25 to pay the person who printed all of this, there was no money. Only then did I find out that the veterans committee received $2,500 every year.

LP: From whom?

IA: The Jewish Federation.

LP: And who did you ask for money for this magazine?

IA: The war veterans committee.

LP: Was it denied?

IA: Yes, they didn’t care about all that and took everything into their own hands. The Jewish Federation puts out a magazine, at the end of which is attached their full financial report down to the cent. There I saw that the war veterans committee gets $2,500.

LP: Who was its chairman?

IA: One doesn’t speak ill of the dead. There was a gang of people and they didn’t allow me into their meetings, in spite of my requests and suggestions. The only thing that was put on for veterans: once a year, on May 9 [war victory day], there were celebrations in the restaurants.

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LP: What’s the status of the magazine now?

IA: It’s not around anymore. Nobody did anything, and it ceased to exist.

LP: That’s disappointing, if something you started does not continue.

IA: I can’t get over it. My wife always tells me, “Stop!” but I can’t.

LP: And is there any interest in publishing this magazine?

Isay’s Wife: Among the people who read it, no. In this building old and sick people live, and each of them has their own life: they care for their children, grandchildren and great- grandchildren, care of their illnesses, and there is little beyond this that interests them, that’s why there isn’t support. Without support, it won’t happen.

LP: What else have you done?

IA: I also put out a magazine for our building—a version in English and one in Russian. I passed this magazine out to everybody for free. It was possible to do all of that for free. In each of the buildings, there’s an office with a copy machine, and you can print everything on it. I gathered information from our people and wanted to make an encyclopedia of the residents of our building. After all, you can judge an ocean from the condition of one of its drops of water. Among our residents were people who had been chased from buses by the Ku Klux Klan. When I started working on this, there was one senior American woman who helped me. The goal of the journal was, first of all, to introduce the Americans to us. I selected people, predominantly, who were war veterans, and briefly described their stories. I found a person here who repeated what [Alexander] Suvorov carried out some 200 years ago—crossing the Alps. He completed a crossing through the Caucasus Mountains, which was just as difficult as crossing the Alps. This person is now in a nursing home. By the way, one could create a book of interesting people in a nursing home, since they frequently end up here, but nobody knows anything about them, and they pass away to another world.

LP: And do the children of these people undertake any of it?

IA: Their children aren’t interested in anything of the sort. I have a grandson, he’s a good professional, and this isn’t interesting to him, either. He’s busy and can’t come here and work on this.

IW: The children carry their own load. The children work and have other things to do. Now, because of the [financial] crisis, each of them wakes up with a headache and worry: will the boss give them work today or will they be laid off.

IA: It seems that without some kind of material interest, it won’t get anywhere.

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LP: Didn’t the Jewish Federation help with this at all, call for volunteers?

IA: You can ask the Jewish Federation yourself, whether they are interested in these types of questions. There was a person there named Feldman. He worked part-time, so he had little interest in all of this business. I talked to him a long time ago now about a museum and similar things, but nothing was done. We have a museum here called Maltz [the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage]. I’ve never seen a museum like this anywhere else—elegantly designed, even the walls are made from bricks brought from Israel. But in there, you won’t learn of a single immigrant from the Soviet Union, millions of whom left and came here, to America.

LP: That’s why the Jewish Federation is paying money now for a translator and the archive. They set aside special funds to record people’s histories.

IA: That’s wonderful! This is the first time in my life that somebody has been interested in my story.

LP: I can recommend that, in case you have any suggestions, you write them out.

IA: People’s contributions to history, their resilience and endurance need to be conveyed to the younger generations. This is not just my opinion, but also that of the Jewish Federation.

LP: That’s exactly what the Jewish Federation is doing now.

IA: It’s doing it, but late.

LP: Why?

IA: Because many good people have already passed away to the other world. But it’s better late than never. Let’s return to my magazine. This also came to an end because of the inertness of the masses and the lack of financial help. I gave all of these magazines to the archive, and you can find many people in them that are worth writing about; for example, that person who recreated Suvorov’s feat, or another person who walked to Belarus through bogs. But the war veterans committee didn’t do that, even though they received money. The Jewish Federation needs to write to the newspapers about people that are doing something and, that way, get the public’s interest. Now more on my activities in America: I participated in the public life of this region, city and republic; I regularly provided help to the building’s residents on various issues— translating from English, accompanying them to doctors as a translator, getting vouchers for free vegetables, distributing TV programs, distributing gifts. For TV programs, subscriptions are done by the week. If you subscribe on your own, then you must pay $25, and if you do it for the entire year, then you must pay $15. First, I needed to gather the payments from people, submit them, and, after that, distribute throughout the entire building, going to 250 apartments—this could take an entire day. I do all of that to this day. With the aim of building a community in a building of 250 apartments, of which more than half are Russian, I subscribe to newspapers and magazines in Russian and English: “Jewish World,” the “[New York] Times” and others. I forcibly

15 distribute these newspapers to people—my wife can confirm it. Nobody wants to do or read anything—they only watch TV shows. I needed to find an unorthodox method to force people to read, because they don’t want to. I took one magazine and marked a very interesting little article in red marker. People read what I marked and, at the same time, inadvertently read something else and, in that manner, start to develop a taste for it.

LP: So, it looks like you work at educating the community?

IA: Yes, with unorthodox methods.

IW: Isay Mikhailovich, I don’t think that’s right. You can’t force people [to do something] if they don’t want to.

IA: We need to stir up the masses, distract them from their illnesses and everything like that, and in doing so, extend their lives. I pass out newspapers and magazines, specifically highlighting the themes of US history and [general] history and Jewish traditions. I also specifically selected literature about the Holocaust—magazines--put together the recollections of my mother, prisoner of the ghetto, with subsequent lectures in English. People also get the newspaper of the “ghettovtsev” [translator’s note: Jewish Holocaust survivors] from New York. The newspaper is called “Together.” There are some things there about the Jews of Warsaw, and also about how Jews were saved in Albania—the only country that didn’t kill anybody. These newspapers lie in piles on the shelf of the mailroom. Everybody walks past, because they can’t read in English. I need to find a way to tell the Americans about the Holocaust. If I try to get them together, they won’t come. I need to use literature that is already published—in this case, that newspaper, “Together.” People from the newspaper asked me to tell them the addresses of everybody who has left, because each delivery costs money. I sent them 15 names of people who do not speak English, and asked them to send at least one page in Russian, so then people will read it and also give them money. I received this response: “We are very grateful for the recommendation, but we do not have translators.” Imagine, in New York there are no translators! I told them that I will translate it for them for free, and in literally 20 minutes, sent them a completed article. They agreed, but they said that they don’t have Russian font. I suggested they come to an agreement with some Russian newspaper in that regard. After all, just here, I found 15 people who do not speak English, and how many people are there throughout all of America! During the Holocaust, the ghetto was filled with Jews primarily not from Colorado or Ohio, but from Russia and Belarus. We need newspapers in Russian! I also give talks in English about Russian history, and three times, I have appeared on American television, urging residents to actively participate in elections. Our residents don’t understand the entire voting process for Russian people in this country—there are many places you need to go. But it is also possible to do it in a way that you don’t need to go anywhere, but then you need to fill out the necessary forms, and Russian-speaking people can’t do this on their own, so I do this. I did 75 forms, which helped in the election of our mayor. This is what each of us can do within our region, city and republic. I also set up a list of people who participated in the war. This list, with photographs of American and Soviet soldiers, represents the friendship of nations. I displayed it in a visible place, at the entrance, to remind the arriving public of our friendship in

16 the war. As a matter of fact, there isn’t a display like this in a single large building in this city. In the Schnurmann building [an independent living facility for the elderly], there are 25 American veterans of the war. A display like this is not expensive. Many people didn’t have suitable photographs, even from childhood. I had to hire a person to photograph them. Generally speaking, a lot of work falls on a single set of shoulders. On evenings dedicated to our historical dates, we invite our African-Americans, and they invite us to their evenings. We don’t understand anything there, but they still invite us.

LP: I would like to end our interview now. I will take your picture, if you’ll allow me, and lists of your achievements and your textbook.

IA: Okay. By the way, you know, I don’t want to brag, but there are not that many Jews among us who’ve received congratulations from four world presidents: Bush, Clinton, Obama and Medvedev. I received certificates of merit from the UN administration, from Governor Voinovich, from the Jewish Federation, from Congressman Joyce, from Governor Bob Taft, from Congressman Steven LaTourette and some others.

LP: I’d like to thank you for your interview. I will make copies of all of your documents now.

IA: One thing interests me—to make a mark on somebody’s soul and for somebody to pick up this flag and carry it further. One day, at a meeting of our club, I said, “Friends, every night, look in the mirror and ask yourself, what good you have done for the community today!” Let it be some small thing. We have people whose spirits fall very low, and they sink into depression. We go to them and always try to rejuvenate them, to awaken them to do something useful. The majority of people sit in their “hives” and watch television. Let the Jewish Federation inspire people toward useful actions, so that we could then go to the people and ask them what useful thing they have done today. From the Jewish Federation’s [financial] statements, it’s clear that, every year, half a million dollars are set aside for schools. The question then is what the director of the schools can do for all of us. Can it really be that, among the students, not a single volunteer can be found who could come to the war veterans with or without a translator, and provide moral support or help to gather all of the necessary documents, materials?

LP: That is what the Jewish Federation is doing. That’s why I came here today.

IA: Yes, now you’ve come, but until now, nobody did. But there are also schools, the principals of the schools.

LP: Well, we can’t make decisions for them.

IA: Here’s a suggestion. I could find people who can gather all of the materials and do everything that’s needed, but they don’t have transportation. In the schools, even the students have their own cars! Let them provide transportation for at least half an hour, and in doing so, they’ll do something very useful!

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LP: You and I are not able to solve this problem for now. We need to finish already.

IA: That is why I call upon the Jewish Federation to organize the people and take the initiative.

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