Soviet Jewish Oral History Project Western Reserve Historical Society Interviewee: Boris Kolker Interviewer: Svetlana Kurinsky Date of interview: August 27, 2014 Location of interview: 6755 Mayfield Road, Mayfield Heights

Svetlana Kurinsky: Today is August 26th of 2014. My name is Svetlana Kurinsky. I am at the home of Boris and Esther Kolker. Thank you very much Boris to be with me today and to give your history. Let’s begin the interview. Could you please introduce yourself?

[Russian speech]

Boris Kolker: Hello Svetlana. My name is Boris Kolker, and…I was born on July 15th in 1939 in Tiraspol, Moldova in the . Now it is the capital of Transnistria. We arrived in Cleveland on June 10th, 1993, and finally our family reunited here. We came here from Ural Mountains, and our daughter started in . She was married there, and she remained in Moscow. Here it’s only our family, my wife Esther Kolker, daughter Isabella Blyumin (Kolker), son-in-law, Ilya, or Leo Blyumin, and grandchildren, Alex and Eugene, and finally our two great grandchildren, Adam and Matthew. Currently I am retired. Here in Cleveland I worked as office manager at the company Magic Micro Computers, and also as a freelance translator. For higher education, Moldavian State University in Kishinev and I have Ph.D. in linguistics from Institute in Linguistics at Academy of Sciences of USSR in Moscow.

SK: Wow. Alright, can you tell us about your life in the, you know, Moldova when you were young, about your family?

BK: Yes…my parents came to Kishinev in 1940 when it was added to Soviet Union. Previously they used to live in Tiraspol, Moldova too, but generally they came from Ukraine, from city of Balta. All our huge extended family is from Balta. It’s interesting; my birth certificate says that I was born in Tiraspol, Moldavian Autonomic Republic, Ukrainian Republic. So it is in Ukrainian language, birth certificate Ukrainian and Russian.

SK: Interesting, wow. So your parents heard this, and then they moved for some reason to Moldova.

BK: Yes to Tiraspol, which was at the time capital of Moldova, autonomous Moldova. Yes, my father Gersh, or Grigori, he was…he was an artist. He was an artist, a decorative artist.

SK: He was a painter?

1

BK: Yes, he was a painter. And…he didn’t have higher education; he…had hardly high school, hardly. Because at that time it was really hard to get education, but he was very talented, and he also had very broad horizon of knowledge. He read much and he knew mostly writers from abroad. He knew them, and the…market in Kishinev after the war it was possible to buy many things of interest for very cheap. He bought…magazines from the beginning of the century, and so I learned to read at six year old, and I read these old magazines, old books, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, old volumes before the revolution.

SK: Wow.

BK: With the old Russian alphabet. Six year old reading. Yes, and we had a lot of books for the time. Not just in Russian, we had books in Yiddish. Yes they were published before the war, and after the war it was time, yes. And my mother Fanya, she thought it was… she had higher education. She grew up in very poor conditions that her mom gave her to orphan home and then she wanted to study. She went to Kharkov and studied there in commercial college. And she became…a specialist and economist and then in many years she was teaching, teaching a special subject…merchandise science in schools. She taught tens of years in Kishinev.

SK: In secondary schools?

BK: No, no, in special schools.

SK: Oh, in special skills.

BK: Yes in special schools.

SK: So like a specialized school for people who wanted to go into merchandising?

BK: Yes.

SK: Technikum.

BK: Yes.

SK: Coming from an orphanage and a poor background…

BK: Yes. Because her father was killed in 1919 civil war and the mom had several children, no money, it was terrible. Yes, so we lived during the World War Two our family, the father was at the war.

SK: So he went to war?

2

BK: Yes, he was drafted. Our family moved to Uzbekistan. From there, we returned in 1944, to Kishinev. In 1944 when Kishinev was liberated, we came back to Kishinev. I was told that my father had not only much knowledge, he knew much, he also had some critical attitude to the existent power. He liked to joke and sometimes the jokes were political. My mom, who was a member of a communist party, she told…shut up everywhere. Yes, somebody could hear it.

SK: She spoke Yiddish at home?

BK: At home they spoke Yiddish and Russian. And my mom wrote letters to her mom only in Yiddish. So I have a collection of Yiddish letters.

SK: That’s beautiful, and she kept in touch with her mom?

BK: Yes, her mom used to live in Odessa. And also her sisters and distant extended family lived there in Odessa. And also, you probably don’t know this expression. When people were not happy with the actions of the government and they said in Yiddish A melikhel. It means, “What the government?”

SK: Yeah, I don’t know that expression.

BK: “What the government?” I graduated from high school number three; it was a famous school in Kishinev, an old part of Kishinev. We used to live there. And then…because I tried to…go to the local university and for the first time I wasn’t accepted.

SK: Because you were Jewish?

BK: Probably. They didn’t tell me. I had four admission exams there. Perfect in four, and in one good, I wasn’t accepted. And so next year I went to Tirapol, to a provincial college, a teachers college. So I was accepted there, and there I met my future wife, Esther. And later we moved, both to Kishinev. We graduated from this university with red diplomas. We were not accepted the first year, and we graduated with perfect red diploma.

SK: With honors?

BK: Yes with honors. And then when we looked for a better job, and better conditions to live. Because we lived with our parents, and it wasn’t enough space, then our daughter was born. I looked for a better job, and found a good one far away in frosty Ural Mountains, in Bashkiria in a teachers college, as a senior teacher of linguistics and French language. I graduated with French and , two majors. I changed jobs several times. We moved to the small town of Birsk, then in two years to the capital, [where] I worked also in a teachers college. Esther worked at the Aviation

3

Institute, because she was a mathematician. Then she worked to teach high school mathematics, and physics, and special classes for special students in math.

SK: Gifted and talented students?

BK: Yes. For two years I worked as an interpreter with the French automobile company Renault. They constructed an engine factory for the car “Moskvitch.” I worked there with them as an interpreter. Then I became translator. I moved to Institute of Oil and well logging. There I worked for twenty years as head of translation service. So we moved here in 1993. That is the life in that country, work, and study, and family and . This is my hobby and occupation for all my life. When I was a student, I learned the international language Esperanto. I was so interested in this, that it became my main hobby. I took part in the movement. The language was forbidden in Stalin’s times, you know, international relations, spies. But after this dictator died, it became legal. I taught it, and took part in the movement. We organized camps and clubs. It was a very interesting life for young people. Esther, me and our daughter Bella were going to camps all over the country. At the time, people almost didn’t move. They stayed in their cities. In 1960 I took a huge trip from Kishinev to Moscow. I stayed there, then to Tallinn, then to Tartu, then to Esperanto camp, then to Leningrad, then to Kishinev. Today, it is almost around the world.

SK: That probably took you all summer.

BK: Probably three weeks. No so much. Then I wrote Esperanto textbooks for Russian people, and then international textbooks. In 1963 there were conventions for Esperanto that happened in Bulgaria, in Sofia. In Bulgaria, these people were close to the local government, and they asked the Soviet Central Committee of Communist Party to send a group. Never had Soviet people taken part in this world convention. People were excited to go there, they were mostly from Moscow and Leningrad. They were old people, members of the party. I wanted to go too. But, you know, I had some “sins.” I was not a member of the communist party, I was too young, only twenty four years old, I was provincial, and finally I’m Jewish. There is hidden anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. Because of Esperanto I was interested in learning several languages. It helps to learn several languages, and also linguistics. Just then they begin the first attempts at machine translation. I studied this and did my work in algorithms to translate from Russian to Esperanto.

SK: You wrote an algorithm for a computer?

BK: Yes. It didn’t mean that it was tested there. It was a theoretical work. I offered it to the World Esperanto Association, so I could do a lecture during the convention about this work. There was a university lecturer there. My lecture was accepted, but it was nothing for those in Moscow. But in Moscow there was a famous linguist Bakarev who was also an Esperantist. He told me [my algorithm] was very good, and it would be good

4 if [Kolker] goes. He was the head of the Soviet delegation. They sent me an invitation to the Moldavian Society of Friendship. I received the permission of the Central Committee. I received this permission very late. They had a convention on this subject once a month. Finally I was told you are permitted to go. What should I do now? I take a train to Moscow and come to the Union of the Society of Friendship. Their first question is “Give me your passport” I show them. They say you need a foreign passport to travel abroad. I don’t know what this is, I have only this. “Oh no, this passport will not do.” What should I do? Call the Moldovan Society of Friendship. We don’t have money for long distance call. What should I do? Go and call from central telegraph. I go and call from there, and talk to the president. He says, “Don’t worry, call me tomorrow.” I go directly to the airport, the chief of the flight says, “Moscow had your passport.” I come and he gives me the passport. This is a miracle. And what about your lecture? I had permission to do it. It was not censored. I did not have the permission of the censor, the permission of the government to speak publicly abroad. I had to give them the Russian translation. Will I go tomorrow? No, I am not allowed. I ask Professor Bakharev, “What should I do?” He says, “I take responsibility for his public words.” So I was permitted to speak publicly. After this we went by train through Moscow through Kishinev, Romania, Bulgaria, and I couldn’t believe I was really going. Only when we crossed the border of Romania, I understood the police will not come and take me away.

The next International Esperanto convention had to be in the Netherlands. I was preparing to go there, but for every trip abroad every person had to receive the recommendation of the local party organization. For the first time I received it, now it was April 30th, in the evening, and suddenly one colleague I worked with in the Public Library, in the foreign literature department, she comes to me. She says, “I forgot to tell you, but tomorrow you have to go to the first May demonstration.” I tell her I can’t, because my wife and I are going to Tiraspol to celebrate our fifth anniversary. So we went to Tiraspol, and then the time came for the convention. The party organization told me no, we will not recommend you; you didn’t go to the first May Day demonstration. They didn’t give me the piece of paper. Because of this, I didn’t go to the convention, and I was removed from the list in Moscow [for those going to the convention] in this way. That’s life.

We had a very active Esperanto movement. Finally, they noticed us from Moscow, and from Central Committee. We became a small state in the state, it was not good. There are thousands of people there; they have correspondence abroad with the camps. They decided to give us an authorization for a formal organization. In 1979 our organization was founded and I was elected as a member of the board of directors, because I was one of the most active. I went a few times to this world Esperanto convention. I paid myself. In this way I was in Switzerland in 79’, Belgium 82’, Budapest in 83’.

Then it was again a very interesting turn of events. From time to time I was asked to write book reviews for international Esperanto magazine. I did it, and didn’t go to the authorities to get permission. Nobody paid attention. But it was a book published in

5

Israel. It was nothing special in the book. I wrote a very careful review, and it was published and they noticed it in high places. They told me that Israel does not exist, so how can you write reviews for a book published in a country that doesn’t exist. We don’t recognize it, it doesn’t exist. I lost my position on the board of directors. Then I had to go and defend my Ph.D. thesis at the Institute of Linguistics in this mood. This was my life in that country.

SK: What made you want to move to the ?

BK: Generally people started to move. In our institute there was a young couple. Their parents remained in Lvov, they received permission, and they were in the same package with the children. They moved to Israel and the director of the institute, it is not good people are moving to Israel. Then it was a physicist, a good physicist who worked with us. Suddenly, he and his wife who was a teacher at a university also moved to Israel. We thought our director might not stay in his place, but he stayed. He was a very good specialist. In Ukraine people moved, but for Moldavians it was far. Finally, my aunt, the sister of my father, she was married to a person from Bessarabia, from Romania. [unintelligible] So they decided to go in 89’.

SK: To the United States or to Israel?

BK: To the United States, but through Vienna and Rome. I went to Kishinev to accompany them. At the time my parents died. My brother and his wife are leaving. We went home to this party, and he told me, “I don’t know about you, but I will go to the USA.” I was shocked because I hadn’t thought about it. He was close to them.

SK: Is he younger than you?

BK: Yes, ten years younger.

SK: What’s his name?

BK: David. They send him an invitation; it was complicated because they had to give huge money to guarantee it. They didn’t have money, it was complicated. Finally, he went. Suddenly, two sisters of Esther also announced they will go to the United States, and in April of 91’ we went to accompany them again. Then my uncle announced he will go to Israel in the summer of 91’. Then we went again to Kishinev to accompany them and some other relatives. It was our last trip to Kishinev because we had no more relatives there. They all left. Esther’s older sister told us, we will send you an invitation. It took time. When we received this invitation we started to prepare ourselves. The plan changed, the time changed. In October of 92’ we had an interview in the American embassy in Moscow. We went with our daughter and her family, because we were in the same package.

6

SK: She was already married?

BK: Yes, she was already married and had two sons. When we came here, we had to do something with our cooperative apartment. There people get them for free, here we had to buy it with our little income. Probably in January or February I went to the office to get our passports and exit visas. The head of the office told me, “Congratulations, I wish you to install yourself well in the United States.” And I was so shocked because previously people couldn’t go, they were in trouble. I said, “It’s a pity there are no people from television to show how you congratulate me.” The times change. Finally, on June 10th we started to fly from Moscow. The same day, it was a long trip in the same day. We came to Cleveland because the elder sister of Esther who invited us lived here. They met us here. Our children came in October because in Moscow the formalities were more complicated. So in this way we came here.

SK: So you came here to reunite with family. Could you describe your initial adjustment to life in the Cleveland area? Did you like Cleveland? You came at a nice time, summer. You have family here, how was it?

BK: When…

SK: Did you live with Esther’s sister in the beginning?

BK: Yes for one, two, three weeks. Before this I was invited to teach Esperanto summer courses at University. We came here on June 10th, and in two weeks I had to go to San Francisco. I hoped that our adaptation would be easy, because I thought my knowledge of English was pretty good. I thought I had good profession as translator of scientific literature. Finally, I thought I would teach Russian language, with my Ph.D. It was wrong.

SK: Did you go to San Francisco?

BK: Yes, I taught there. In three weeks I was paid extremely well, more than $2,000. I couldn’t imagine it, because before our leaving we sold our furniture for $20. It’s money, it is hard money.

SK: How much were you making? You had a high position in the translating department in ?

BK: I had a pretty high salary before coming, two hundred and two hundred sixty rubles per month.

SK: It’s double probably what a normal person would make.

7

BK: Yes, it was double. [unintelligible] What was wrong? First, I was fifty-four years old. I didn’t think I was old, but I was. For the United States, who needs a fifty-four year old person? Second, the Cold War is over and the Russian language is not taught much, and at that time they almost stopped teaching the Russian language. About translation, I was shut out. In the Soviet Union it was a very popular profession, and very needed, but here, no. Here, the specialists say this article or patent is not published in English, it doesn’t exist, not interested. Translator in a rare profession and hardly needed. I was shocked. I finally understood that I had to find any work, anything, because I had to pay bills, apartment etcetera. Our first apartment was on Mayfield Road near Coventry. Several immigrants lived there at that time, across from the gas station. So I had to go every day and look for work. I was in Little Italy, and I see in a little Italian restaurant, “Help Wanted.” What do you have here? Waiter, okay waiter, it is money. You can write an application, but please write at least two people who could recommend you, who know you for at least two years. Who could know me here? It was one lady, an old Esperantist. We corresponded a little bit before. So I wrote her name, and I knew some Esperantists in the United States. So it was the president of the University of Hartford in Connecticut. I wrote “Doctor Tonkin, President.” I imagine how they laughed. President of University of Hartford recommend me for waiter job. They never replied to me. It was very hard.

SK: Did the Federation help you at all, the Jewish Federation?

BK: Yes, there was this Jewish Family Service Association. They found us our apartment. He gave us a little money that we had to repay later. Sometimes they sent people to study at some courses. I was told that there are some courses for computers. I asked and they said, “No, there is no place for you. If you want we can send you to the nurse- helper lessons.” No, that I don’t want. So I looked on my own. Finally I found something, downtown on the 16th floor of the Rockefeller building. It was a large attorney company. I was told, don’t say you have a Ph.D., don’t say you went to university. But when I got an interview I told them. The manager said, “You know, the minimum wage is 4.25 an hour. I give you 4.50.” I went to this work, and I worked there four and a half years as the file clerk. It means every day mail came, and the ten people in the file room put them into files. The manager asked me for the English alphabet, which doesn’t matter because the files are numbered. I go, “A B C ahh…” They say, “Stop.” I worked there for four and a half years. Then, every year they raised my wages fifty cents.

I also looked for a translation job. I found a guy, Alex Challand. He and his wife were well established here. They came from Leningrad; he worked as an engineer in some automobile company probably. He had a travel agency for Russian people. The wife worked as a librarian at NASA here. And they had translation from Russian to English to translate for space exploration. He didn’t have time to do everything, because he worked full time, he had travel business, and he translated. So I asked him, “Give me some translation.” He asks me, “And what computer do you have?” I didn’t have a computer; nobody had a computer in that country at that time. “How did you translate

8 there?” I took a pen, I wrote, and I gave it to a typist. He says, “No, here the translator does everything.” In the beginning of 94’ I bought a computer for a terrible amount, a thousand dollars. It was the computer, printer, everything to translate for him. Fast, fast, fast translate from Russian to English is not easy. English was not my specialty. I learned it myself through Esperanto with a textbook. I did it, and I went to him for the first time. We moved to downtown, and lived downtown in subsidized building close to Cleveland public library. I went to him in Lyndhurst, and for the first time he gave me a check. Thirty-six dollars, wow, money, then from time to time I did translation for him, then for International Services center. From time to time written translations, for attorneys, diplomas, etcetera. But it was not work.

Our daughter’s husband died of a heart attack after coming to Cleveland. In two years she met other guy from Moscow, Ilya. He is a very talented person, and they opened a small computer company with the name Magic Micro Computers. At the beginning I went there to do paperwork. Finally they told me, “Come to work here.” I left my downtown work and I came here, I work as office manager, as bookkeeper, everything, except making the computer, assembling computers. I worked there until I retired.

SK: You’re retired now from that?

BK: Yes. Just recently I became 75. I retired just ten years ago. Maybe you want to ask me about our relations to Jewish organizations?

SK: That would be nice. You’re very active in the Jewish community. Esther is very active, she knows everyone.

BK: We had JCC here, JCC there. It was on Mayfield at Taylor road. The Russian community was gathered there before our coming here. It was an organized group of senior Russian immigrants. It still exists now. But the club is not so active since they destroyed the building. Four times a year we have some party at a restaurant, nothing else. Back then it was lectures, and many things. We had the first Russian newspaper was published by JCC, it was in Russian language.

SK: Did you take part in that? That would be a good fit.

BK: That was before us. It was some Azerbaijani person. His wife was Jewish. He used to work as a journalist at the main newspaper in Azerbaijan. It was the time when I taught Russian language for children at the JCC, during two years probably. When I started to work full time here, at Magic Micro Computers I stopped that, because I couldn’t do it at the same time. We met these people who started the international movement for free immigration of Soviet Jews. We met them and we organized meetings with immigrants. Esther will tell this in her interview in detail, I only mention it. We published some articles about it. These articles are on the internet. There were some writers here and his name was Yuri Gert. He had a plan to publish an almanac every year. We started to

9 gather some material. He asked me what I could write. We lived downtown for six years, so I knew downtown. We used to live on East 13th and I worked at West 6th. Everyday I walked to my work from my home. Every time I came home I would visit the public buildings. Nobody knows downtown as well as I know it. I did tours downtown for Russian people. Finally I told them, before we celebrated 200 years of Cleveland, the editor of a Russian magazine asked me to write an article. I wrote in four parts and it was published there in the newspaper. I wrote an article about Cleveland. I wrote it to publish. The magazine says, they need $400 to publish. It isn’t free. We started to look for money. Yuri Gert and me, we asked the president of the Jewish Federation, Goldberg, Robert Goldberg, and he invited us. Yuri didn’t speak English so I was the translator. We explained to him, and just in that moment I told him, “We know American Jews did so much for free immigration of Soviet Jews.” He tells me suddenly, “Did you know that they live here in Cleveland?” He goes out of the room, and comes back and gives me the name “Rosenblum”, he lives in Cleveland. Then, we ask for money to publish the book. He said he will ask some charity organization. One year, passes, two years, three years, nothing, no organization gave some money to publish this in Russian. Finally I was called there, they said, “There is money”. It was given anonymous. Robert Goldberg gave money from his pocket. He was the owner of a Ohio Savings Bank.

SK: So you’re glad you immigrated to Cleveland? You seem to love this city.

BK: Yes. Generally, everybody receives some letters asking for money. When I started earning some decent money, I gave some, how much we could to different charity organizations, and also to Jewish Federation. They invited us every year to these annual meetings. We went to several other organizations. We are not members of some Synagogue. Our children are members of a temple it is called “Shaker-Richmond” and sometimes we come there. And last year our granddaughter had a Bat mitzvah there. In the Soviet Union we are not religious, but we have some connection to it. So if you have more questions?

SK: What would you say was the most difficult thing to deal with? You came here, and you were older, but you didn’t have the language problem much.

BK: I didn’t have the language problem once. I remember once, I was going on the bus and some Jewish man started to talk to me, and he asked me, and I told him that I came recently. “Do you work?” No. “Why don’t you work?” I can’t find work. “I will give you work, please build me a garage.” I can’t. “Why won’t you work I offer you work.” I can’t do it! “You immigrants, you don’t want to work.” One of the Esperantists was in the state of Washington. I wrote to him, maybe I could go to his doctor school, and he told me no, look for work of office cleaner. No, thank you. It was not easy.

SK: Having a Ph.D. and being a linguist your whole life, and coming here and not being able to work…

10

BK: We are here, and we are happy. We feel this country is our country. In this beginning we were happy. It was a long period, but what can we do.

SK: Thank you Boris for your fascinating story.

11