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DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Zalman Grinberg. Full, unedited interview, 2012 ID FL007.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4j09w657 ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN TABLE OF CONTENTS ITEM TRANSCRIPT ENGLISH TRANSLATION 2 CITATION & RIGHTS 11 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 1/11 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Zalman Grinberg. Full, unedited interview, 2012 ID FL007.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4j09w657 ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN TRANSCRIPT ENGLISH TRANSLATION —Today is November 26, 2012. We are in Miami, meeting a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. Please introduce yourself. My name is Zalman Aronovich Gringerg. —When and where were you born? I was born on May 17, 1922, in the district seat of Chemerivtsi, Kamianets-Podilskyi Oblast, Ukraine [now Khmelnitskii Oblast]. —Until what age did you live in your home town? Until I was . seventeen. I began first grade when I turned seven. It was at a Jewish seven-year school. After graduating from that school, I began eighth grade at a Ukrainian high school, from which I also successfully graduated in 1939. I had an almost perfect report card except for one grade, which was just “good.” Because of this I had to take entrance exams to enroll at university. In 1939 I enrolled as a freshman at the Odessa [Odesa] Institute of Communications. I was a good student. I completed a year, went back home to visit my parents, and began my sophomore year. In 1940, on the orders of then Minister of Defense Timoshenko, I and my comrades at the institute were all conscripted. —I am sorry, but I have to interrupt you. Could you tell us a bit more about your family? Did you have any siblings? What did your parents do for a living? What was life like in the shtetl? What do you remember of it? My mother was my father’s second wife. His first wife passed away sometime around 1918. He already had three children, two sons and one daughter. Then my father got married to my mother, Khava. Then they had four more children from that marriage. In 1920 the oldest son, Gersh Grinberg, moved to America and settled Cleveland. Some distant relatives helped him out. In 1922 another son left for Palestine. Of course I was not even alive then, so this was all recounted to me. He settled in Rishon LeZion, not far from Tel Aviv, and then moved to Tel Aviv. He continued to live there when Israel was founded; he got married. Gersh also got married, to a Jewish woman from Belgium. —Did your family observe Jewish traditions? Did your father attend synagogue? What about candles on Friday? 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 2/11 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Zalman Grinberg. Full, unedited interview, 2012 ID FL007.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4j09w657 ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN My father and I are Kohens. Unlike his siblings, my father was religious beyond the shadow of a doubt. We only ate kosher food and attended synagogue on holidays. Even though he was a Soviet worker, he attended synagogue and prayed at home every day. He would always put his tallit on first thing in the morning. However it was all a bit . secretive. He was a liberal person. We had guests over, sang, and danced tango and foxtrot. Our shtetl was considered . a center of culture and education; there were many engineers and doctors came from there, but they all settled in different cities. —Since it was a shtetl, there were many Jews . There were about 3,000 Jews, but the surrounding district was entirely Ukrainian. —Did the Jewish and Ukrainian children play together? There were only Jewish kids at the Jewish school, but at the Ukrainian school . we did play. Anti-Semitic incidents were very rare. In general life was harmonious and happy. I want to emphasize that. This was before the war, or rather before the friendship pact between Hitler and the Soviet Union. I remember they would gather the Young Pioneers and take us to the Polish border. —These were the Young Pioneers from your Jewish school. Yes, first I attended a Jewish school and then a Ukrainian one. We traveled 10 kilometers to the Polish border, which ran along a river. Depending on the geopolitical situation, we would sometimes stand there and shout “Down with Pilsudski!” At that time Pilsudski and Hitler were on good terms. We would shout . There were people, even some relatives of the people from the little border town of Husyatyn. On the other side of the river there were Polish Jews, while on our side there were Soviet Jews. We shouted “Down with Pilsudski.” He was the Polish president at the time. Most of the Jews in our shtetl did not work the land. There were tradesmen, teachers—some people studied and came back as engineers. We had an exceptional math teacher until seventh grade and then another good one at the Ukrainian school. —What were Jewish holidays in the shtetl like? 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 3/11 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Zalman Grinberg. Full, unedited interview, 2012 ID FL007.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4j09w657 ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN They were celebrated in secret. We celebrated Passover at home. As I mentioned, my father was a Kohen, I am a Kohen, and my son and grandson are Kohens as well. My father would recline as he was supposed to, and I would ask "Ma nishtana halayla hazeh." I probably asked in Yiddish, although I did have a melamed who gave me private Hebrew lessons . I knew some prayers. —Did your parents speak Yiddish at home? Yes, we all spoke Yiddish to each other. Naturally, we spoke Ukrainian to the Ukrainians. —Did some Ukrainians also know Yiddish? Yes, or course, but not many. I can read and write in Yiddish. Of course a lot of time has passed, but if I had to use it to speak with someone, we would understand one another quite well. —So you mentioned that you were drafted . I was drafted during my sophomore year at the Odessa Institute of Communications in 1940. The war had not started yet. We were put in . —Cattle cars. Cattle cars, yes. There was a comrade there from my institute. We traveled for a long time. By the way, he later became an artist . but . a mediocre one. We traveled for a long time. Finally we reached Leninakan [now Gyumri], on the border with Turkey. Since I was drafted from the communications institute, I was assigned to a communications unit. They did not understand that I had only just completed some advanced math courses and knew nothing about communications yet. They saw the word “communications” and just assigned me based on that. I was taught Morse code, Baudot code, and ST [?]. I served as a private and guarded bomb warehouses for a while. I served in the 23rd Artillery Observation Squadron. It was led by either Sarkisyan, an Armenian . or perhaps someone else. We installed special devices on airplanes and then developed the film when they returned. Then I was taught to plan routes for the aircraft. I had a supervisor who checked my work. So at first I served as a private in an aerial photo- reconnaissance and communications unit. We were stationed right on the border. We had quite a view from our airfield; we could see the famous town of Alaghez and Mt. Ararat. One time we got lost . and I was given a few days of penal duty. However, this had a positive effect. I did my time because I was at fault. When my time was up Squadron Commissar Pchelin summoned me. He knew my background and said, “You will help me.” 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 4/11 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Zalman Grinberg. Full, unedited interview, 2012 ID FL007.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4j09w657 ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN I continued to perform my duties, but he informed me that I will also be conduction political information sessions for all the men. He realized that I was more or less prepared to do political work. At one point they even put four triangles on my collar; we did not have shoulder straps then. Four triangles meant that I was a sergeant major. Our sergeant major was an angry man. He was too strict for some reason. He was from a village and served his way up to the rank of sergeant major of our company. He chewed us out quite a bit. However, when after less than six months I was promoted, he became even more upset because he could no longer order me around. Are you recording all of this? —Yes. Well, as they say in Ukraine, “what happened, happened.” I also want to note here that two of my brothers had emigrated abroad, a fact that was viewed very negatively in the USSR. Some people thought that they were two spies, one in America and the other in Palestine. What more would you need? This situation had a huge impact on both my physical and mental health. The war found us at night. We were awoken at 6:00 a.m. We were at war! Two or three months later we received our marching orders. We began moving north. The airplanes had already flown there, but we still did not know our destination, of course. There were rumors that we were going to Ukraine. We traveled to this side of the Kerch Strait .