Soviet Jewish Oral History Project Western Reserve Historical Society Interviewee: Vova Chernomorets Interviewer: Sean Martin Date of interview: June 5, 2015 Location of interview: 36985 Independence Court, Solon

SEAN MARTIN: This is Sean Martin. I am doing an interview with Vova Chernomorets on June 5th, 2015 in his home in Solon. Thanks so much for agreeing to do the interview, and to be part of our oral history project at the historical society.

VOVA CHERNOMORETS: Thank you for including me.

SM: Let’s start by introducing yourself. Just introduce yourself however you’d like.

VC: I am Vova Chernomorets. Vova is my nickname; it is the most common nickname for Vladimir in the Russian language, in the same way that Bill is for William in the English language. I am fifty-four years old. I was born January 2nd, 1961 in Kiev, Ukraine, USSR. My family left Kiev in March of 1973. We took a train all the way to Vienna. From there a plane to Tel Aviv, then my family lived for seven months in Israel. We left Israel October 21st or so, right on the heels of the Yom Kippur war. We were in Rome for four months, where my grandmother passed away and is buried, and we came to the United States on February 21st of 1974. We flew to JFK, the next day we flew to Cleveland. So from this point, I guess, tell me what you want to know.

SM: Well that’s quite a summary, and I’ll ask you more about each of those steps a bit later. Let me just ask you some more basic questions now. Tell us about your work, and how you got into your profession, where you went to school and what you studied.

VC: So as a teenager—it’s so funny because there are so many caveats to everything I’m telling you that play some part in why things developed the way they did. But to answer your question more directly and succinctly, I’ve always been interested in mechanics and electronics. I just have that brain, and that engineering mind, and curiosity, and I was always drawn to mechanics and electronics. My initial exposure to it, believe it or not, was in Israel when I found a cutoff lamp cord, with a plug in one end, and exposed wires in the other. I wondered what would happen if I plugged it in and made the wires touch. After knocking the electricity out in half the building we lived in, in Israel, that was my introduction to electricity.

SM: That was for the few months when you were in Israel?

VC: Yes, that was during the seven months in Israel. When we came here I was fascinated with electronics and whatnot. I was very fortunate at Cleveland Heights High School, we had a computing system. It was very old and rudimentary, called a teletype.

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It was in the classroom. The machine itself was the size of a small closet in the corner of the room. Its interface was a very large typewriter type machine on a pedestal sitting next to it with a role of paper. I was fortunate enough to get into the class. They actually offered a computer class. I also took typing believe it or not in high school. I was the only male in a typing class. That kind of worked to my benefit, except for the lack of my linguistic skills, or English I should say. Anyway, that computer class really drew me. Then in the early 1980s, late ‘70s early ‘80s, was the very early start of personal computing technologies. Literally in 1981, I acquired my first personal computer, which was a very small handheld machine called a Timex Sinclair [05:00] with a membrane keyboard. I had that for a little while; then I graduated to a more robust machine made by Atari. Then in the early part of the mid 1980s I built my own IBM compatible PC, which is what they were called at the time. From then on, it was a hobby of mine in the ‘80s. In 1980 I was recruited into the life insurance sales industry. I stayed in that industry for the decade of the 1980s until the end of ‘80s, like in ’91. During the entire time I was still playing with computers as a hobby. By the end of the decade I found myself spending more time with my avocation than with my vocation. In ’91 I had an opportunity. I met a couple of guys who were starting out in the computer parts distribution business, and computer assembly business, manufacturing. They needed health insurance, that’s how I met them. I was very interested in their field. We became friends. They asked me to join them. In ’91 that’s exactly what I did. By then I was pretty much an independent agent in the insurance business, and so I had the flexibility and I had some residual commissions coming in. I had the flexibility to join them in the computer business. That lasted a couple of years. We experienced tremendous growth, and then I started my own computer manufacturing and distribution company called CompuWorld in 1994, January ‘94. I had that until the end of the ‘90s decade when the industry changed tremendously and a lot of consolidation occurred in that industry. After that in 2002 I started my current company, NetWiz. The difference is NetWiz is a services company. NetWiz provides IT support services which is really supporting computing infrastructure in a business. We service small businesses in the Northeast Ohio community. What we do is, literally, we make sure, to correlate it to a municipal for example, we make sure the sewers are flowing clean, the traffic lights are well timed, and the roads are well paved, the lights turn off at dusk and turn on at dawn. We make sure everything is running smoothly, and if it doesn’t we take care of it. We’re more of a managed services provider. We take a proactive approach, and we make sure the police department is functioning correctly by way of anti crap-ware software and so on and so forth.

SM: Let me just ask you some basic biographical questions. Then I’ll ask you some more questions about your immigration and your life in the Soviet Union. Tell me about your family here, and where you live.

VC: I have a wife of 22 years as of yesterday. Her name is Lorna. She is born and bread in Ankeny, Iowa, which is on the outskirts of Des Moines. She was born on a farm. She lived in a smaller town about the size of Solon at the time. Now it’s like the size of

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Chardon or Painesville. She grew up in a small town. We have four children. Three of them, Lorna and I, had together. One of them, my oldest daughter, is from a first marriage before Lorna. My oldest daughter will be 30 July 1st. She’s been married a little over two and a half years. My middle child is Carly who just finished her junior year at Brandeis University. She’s spending the summer working at Goldman Union Camp Institute, which is a camp, a URJ camp in Zanesville, Indiana, a suburb of Indianapolis, where our three younger children went there for their entire pre-teen and teen years. She’s working as staff this year there [10:00]. Our third and fourth children are identical twins, Joshua and Nathan. They were born June 10th of 1997. Carly was born May 15th, 1994. And Erika was born July 1st of ’85.

SM: Okay, that sounds to be a great family you’ve got.

VC: That’s unfortunately the extent of my immediate family, other than a brother that I have in LA. I had two brothers. Unfortunately, one passed away five years ago. My oldest brother who is six years older than I am lives in LA, and that’s all the family I have other than some extended family in Boston and Australia.

SM: Do you have any family in Russia or in Israel now?

VC: No. My family--my mother was an only child raised by a single mother from, what I understand, unfortunately my mother was not a very talkative person, so a lot of what I know I gather from what she’s told me and things that I heard. Unfortunately, there was no extended family on her side whatsoever. There was one woman who came to visit us a couple of times. I don’t even know whether that was a half sister, or a cousin. But I know she had a daughter who I’ve met. Unfortunately haven’t seen them in over 20 some years. So on my mother’s side there is no family. On my father’s side, his youngest sister happens to be in Boston, and I have cousins from her in Boston. That’s the closest of my extended family, other than their sister who has passed away, but they immigrated in ’78, the older sister immigrated in ’78 to Australia. They live in Melbourne, so I have two cousins there. One of whom I’ve met, he’s come to visit me. I hope to visit in Australia. His older sister I remember from the Soviet Union. I remember her visiting us in Kiev, but I have not seen her since.

SM: That was a long time ago.

VC: Well, except for pictures and Facebook and that kind of thing. We haven’t spoken or seen each other since. That’s the extent of my family. My wife’s family, my wife has an extended family in Iowa. She has cousins, aunts and uncles, and a sister in Iowa.

SM: Okay. Describe your life experiences in the former Soviet Union in Kiev before you and your family decided to emigrate.

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VC: That’s a pretty loaded question because, as I mentioned, I was 12 years old when we left the Soviet Union. You know, for a twelve year old child, life was fine. Any twelve year old kid, even today, if you look at Iraq, Syria, and all the, you know, Egypt, and, what do you call it, where Ghaddafi was, Libya, with all the stuff that’s going on there, with all the [turmoil? transcriber’s note: inaudible], and all the tourists, children play. They make whatever it is their playground; they’re not affected like adults are. So for a 12 year old kid, my life was fine; part of that, my life being fine, also included acts of anti-Semitism that were a part of life. We just lived with them because that’s how it was. Some of those acts of anti-Semitism would be--the most memorable is I remember going home from school alone. The school I went to was a newly constructed school, and there was a wooded area next to our neighborhood. We used to mourn the loss of a skiing hill because they basically got rid of the woods to build this school. Part of the pathway of walking from school was through a wooded area. I remember there would be the anti-Semite kids who were older, would be sitting, hanging out and smoking cigarettes. They would see me go by, and they would pick on me. I always tell people I don’t have thin skin. Part of the reason I don’t have thin skin is because [15:00] I didn’t take it laying down. Even though they were older and bigger, if I hit them once with a stick or with a fist, I was satisfied, even though I walked away with a bloody nose and a black eye. To me it was a successful fight. That was unfortunately somewhat common. It wasn’t daily. But it would happen more than once, and there was no point in complaining to anyone because nobody really, anti-Semitism wasn’t sanctioned, but it wasn’t exactly policed either. I remember one incident in particular, I was probably I want to say 8 or 9 years old. My father was shorter than myself. I’m 6’1”. He was less than six feet. He was actually shorter than my mom. He was probably, I don’t know, 5’9” let’s say, 5’8”. But he was a very strong guy, because he was a butcher in the Soviet Union. When I say a butcher, I have to kind of clarify that because when you say butcher you think of somebody actually butchering animals. Well, when I say butcher what he was was he was the meat counter guy, the meat department guy in the super market. He would receive via truck delivery half of a cow, or a half of a pig, or a ton of chickens that were already slaughtered. And then his job, he had a traditional butcher block, three foot diameter butcher block piece of wood, and he would have saws, and axes, and sharp knives that he sharpened himself on a manual, one of those stick things. There was nothing mechanized. His job was very physical, so as a result he was very strong. He had a very strong upper body. The reason I mention this is because when I was about 8 or 9 years old, I remember we lived in a more metropolitan area, kind of like if you think of a Stuyvesant town in New York, a larger apartment complex. That’s what most people lived in, were those types of developments. There was a courtyard, and I remember my father was playing dominoes at a picnic table, it’s the summertime. I was running around with some kids. I remember one of the kids, a little older kid than myself, he was maybe twelve. He started picking on me, and he pushed me into rose bushes. I was 8 or 9 years old so I was somewhat bloody from being scratched up and hurting. My dad saw me and he said, “What happened?” I told him this kid pushed me. He went to talk to the kid, not physically or anything. It so happens the kid’s father saw my dad talking to his kid. I guess my dad was using a somewhat stern voice. So the other

4 kid’s father started, an altercation started between the fathers. Next thing I know there are probably 8 guys on top of my father. It’s gotten physical at that point. None of them are Jewish, he’s the only Jew. The only reason this is happening is because it’s okay to do this to a Jew. I just remember hearing this tremendous lion-like roar and watching these bodies just fly off my father. After that, police came around, and nothing came of it. It was okay. This was life. Things of that nature, and there’s other things. From an anti-Semitism standpoint I very vividly recall, in those days, those were early days of emigration from the Soviet Union. To put it into context, if you were emigrating you immediately got labeled a traitor. Soviet patriotism was a big thing. As was evidenced by, you can see it in the footage of the May Day parades, all this and that other stuff, a lot of pride in Soviet might and the Soviet republic. The pictures that we were painted by news media and teachings in schools, [20:00] is that the West is evil, it’s imperialism, it’s capitalism, the rich ruled the poor. I guess not much different than life is today in America. Nah, I’m just kidding, but you know what I mean.

SM: Yes, I do. I do.

VC: Russian pride and patriotism, Soviet I should say, not Russian, because Soviet Union, as you know, was formed of 30 some republics, all of whom were separate countries at one point, and again today are. It was Soviet pride. Whenever word got out that somebody was leaving, you immediately got labeled as a traitor. You immediately got shunned, it just became—you can imagine it. The reason I say that is because in addition to some things that happened in school, which I will articulate down the road, one of the acts of anti-Semitism I vividly recall and will never forget is, in Russia and in much of Europe it is fashionable to have your entry door into your apartment or home, padded on the outside. You may have seen it in some James Bond films, when he goes into the [transcriber’s note: unintelligible] commander’s? office or whatever. These doors are padded with some leather-like material, with some cushion inside and studded in a decorative way. So, many people had their front doors padded. Now, we live in an apartment complex, so obviously your door is an outside door, so I remember when word got out that we were looking to leave to go to Israel, and I remember one day coming home with my mom and two of my brothers, and there’s commotion in the entryway to our building. As we get closer, we come to find out my dad was sleeping, he was napping or whatever, we lived on the second floor of an apartment, of a—oh my God, I can’t remember, I think it was a four story apartment building, and some anti- Semites, some hoodlums, actually cut the padding on our front door and set it on fire. Without even thinking about the rest of the residents of the building—this was their way of committing an act of anti-Semitism, so that’s something, that thankfully other neighbors--in an apartment building, it’s not hard, fire doesn’t burn too long before people notice it, right? And the material that’s used actually in these things is presumably anti-fire retardant or something but not full fire proof. So that was one thing. I remember when I was in school, so just to put it into context: schools, Soviet schools back then were comprised of a school--first of all, elementary education was ten years. You went into first grade at age 7, you graduated at 17. You went on to college,

5 technical school, whatever your future was holding for you. All ten grades were in the same building, for all ten years, okay. Generally, not in all schools, but where I was, your first grade will be comprised of, let’s say, 25 kids. Typically the 25 kids would stay together through the 10 years, not being isolated from the rest of the school, but it was not uncommon for every year for a class to get reformed, but many of the initial kids were still in the same class. Basically, you went through ten years, and even though the system changed several times at the time I was there, you either stayed in the room where teachers would come to you, or later on it became where the kids would go from room to room, and the teachers owned the room. But basically, the class was together and all ten grades would be in the same building. When it became public knowledge that my family applied for an exit visa to Israel, I remember an incident in school. I am in fifth grade at this point, and I remember--in the Soviet Union manners were an important part of upbringing and whatnot. One of the things that was frowned upon, for example, is to turn your [25:00] back to an authoritative figure, like a teacher. I’ll never forget, the bell rang, and everybody’s getting up, and I get up out of my chair, and just like here chairs had baskets underneath for your books and whatnot, and I turn around to retrieve my books, you know, to leave the class. Obviously at a time like this, everybody was doing it. This was not one of those times where it was improper to turn your back towards the teacher, because you’re moving around, right? So as I do that, I feel this whip on my back. The teacher basically came at me and smacked me with a yardstick and started screaming, “How dare you turn your back, you have a couple of weeks left, you better behave yourself, you deserter.” She’s doing this in front of the class. I’m in fifth grade, I’m twelve years old. I’m the only one being reprimanded here, and there’s no disciplining of the teacher, she’s not doing anything wrong. This is part of the type of anti-Semitism, you know, when I tell people I have thick skin, believe me, it’s thickened up pretty—you know. [Transcriber’s note: background dialog here.]

SM: If you could mention your parents names and say a bit about their family backgrounds, and where they’re from, if they’re not from Kiev?

VC: My mom’s name was Bertha. She was born Bertha, I don’t know if I should mention the maiden name.

SM: Yes, if you would.

VC: The reason I’m thinking is because we use mothers’ maiden names as security questions nowadays. You see what I’m saying?

SM: Well, that’s up to you.

VC: I don’t know. [Transcriber’s note: laughter here.]

SM: That’s fine, that’s fine.

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VC: Bertha Goldenberg, she was born, okay?

SM: Okay.

VC: Her mom’s name was, in Russian it’s Lyubov, it translates to love, her first name was love.

SM: Okay.

VC: My mother was born in December of 1928, and she was born in Kiev, so she lived in Kiev all her life until we left. She was an only child. Her mother, my grandmother, was born in November of 1898. My understanding is she was a lifelong Kievite as well, and I don’t know anything about my grandmother’s family. I don’t know of any relatives whatsoever. My grandmother lived with us for as long as I can remember, and I don’t ever recall her ever having any relatives, at least that I got to meet or know about. My father, his name was Alexander. He was actually born Alexander Korman, and he was born in a shtetl called Bershad which, believe it or not, I found the name of the shtetl in the Holocaust Museum where they have a wall of shtetl names--you walk through this glass corridor--I found it on there. It was in Ukraine. His family at some point made their way to a town called Soroky. He had an older sister who died of some prevalent disease during World War II. She was twelve years older. He became the oldest child, and then he had two sisters. One was—her name was Riva. She was—I want to say, 5-6 years younger. His youngest sister, who is my Aunt Genya, she is still living. She’s in Boston with her kids and her family. Both my grandfathers perished during World War II at the hands of the Nazis, so I never knew either one of them. I remember meeting my paternal grandmother. She came to visit us a couple of times. Her name was—oh my God [30:00]—I have to look it up. Anyway, she lived with her daughters is Soroky. She came to visit us a couple of times that I remember. She passed away shortly after we left the Soviet Union, I mean literally shortly. I remember by dad sitting shiva in our apartment in Israel, like, literally two weeks after we came. My maternal grandmother as I mentioned lived with us forever. We lived in a two bedroom apartment in Kiev. It was fairly small. My brother and I shared a room. My oldest brother actually lived in a boarding school. For a while he lived with us, but for the most part he lived in a boarding school. He is from my father’s first marriage. His mom passed away after his parents got divorced, but she passed away when he was about ten years old. Unfortunately, my mother was not the type of person who ever really accepted him as part of the family. It was just a caveat of hers. But he and I have always been very close. That’s really the extent of my family. I don’t know if I answered your question.

SM: Yeah, no, no, definitely. A couple other questions, if you could just state your brothers’ names?

VC: So my half-brother’s name is Zinovi, Z-I-N-O-V-I. His nickname is Zorik, that’s what I’ve always called him, Z-O-R-I-K, and the brother that passed away; his name was

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Arkady, A-R-K-A-D-Y. He had changed his name here, when we got our citizenship, to Alex.

SM: Okay. And you mentioned that your—

VC: No, he changed his last name actually. He’s the only one to change his last name. At the behest of his second wife, or his first wife, I’m sorry; he changed his entire name to Alex David Chester, so my nephews are Chesters.

SM: Okay. You mentioned your father was Korman?

VC: Yes, my father was born a Korman. In Russia, having a Jewish name was very limiting. It was limiting in the matters of progress; vocational progress, educational progress, for example with a Jewish name it would be much harder unless you were connected through the party somehow, you know, your parents were members of the party. It was near impossible without bribing people, to get into a better educational institution. It was much harder to get a better job, things of that nature. Again, anti- Semitism was not publicly sanctioned, but it was not exactly frowned upon either by the regime. Listen, there’s an old saying that Stalin probably killed as many if not more Jews than Hitler did. Anyway, so my father, when he came to Kiev, I guess he changed the name to Chernomorets, which my understanding was my grandmother’s maiden name or something. I don’t know for sure, but he changed it to Chernomorets because it was not Jewish sounding. It would afford the rest of us, him and our family—you weren’t necessarily out there to hide your Jewishness, even though Jewishness in itself was nonexistent. It was just a label. Not much different than the Nazis sticking a yellow triangle on your piece of clothing. It was nothing more than a label because none of us were able to practice or learn about it or anything. Lack of advertisement was helpful as well.

SM: How would you describe your family’s decision to emigrate? And then what was the actual process of emigration like, getting permission to go? How was it that you went first to Israel and then came to the United States?

VC: The whole Soviet emigration process, I guess, based on what I’ve learned and have come to know, started in the late 60’s. The Soviet Refusniks were people [35:00] who the Soviet Union would claim were of--possessed military knowledge, and they could make that claim on anybody. You know a doctor possessed secret Soviet knowledge. They didn’t want people leaving obviously. It was an embarrassment to the Soviet Union. Inside the Soviet Union, we did not—the Soviet Union was a very closed society. We didn’t have access to western television, western news, western anything. I remember my father had a short-wave radio. I remember he and his friends would gather in the apartment and they would turn on the short-wave radio and they would catch Voice of America. That was their only avenue to the western media. They would sit very quietly in our apartment and listen to some of the broadcasts. I remember some

8 of them were very late at night. God forbid they got caught; they would have been jailed for it, but that was their only window to the world outside of the Soviet walls. He had a couple of friends who had immigrated to Israel. At that time everybody was going to Israel. That was the only way you could leave the Soviet Union, was to go to Israel. My father wanted to go as well. My mother was adamantly against it because it was the only life she knew. Good, bad, or indifferent, this is one thing that’s hard for people, and was hard for people here, to understand. Some of the Soviets would come here and they would say, “I want to go back. I miss my old life,” and people would say, “Why? You have freedom here, how can you miss the anti-Semitism?” and all this and that. The fact of it is, good, bad, or indifferent, when that’s your whole life and that’s all you know, and that’s all you’re used to, it’s your life and you miss it, because in the Soviet Union everything was taken care of for you. Medical care, everything, the government took care of everything. You got bupkis but, you know, the bupkis were all inclusive; it was an all-in kind of a thing. When you come here and you have all these freedoms, well people here have a difficult time understanding because they grew up with it and lived with it. Along with that freedom, comes a world of responsibility that you never had before. Paying doctors, health insurance, finding your own job, those are all things that nobody in the Soviet Union ever was concerned with. Those are huge things. Getting a car, the Soviet Union is very European. To get a car, you had to justify “means and need” to buy a car. If your means were in any way elicit you went to jail for wanting to buy a car. Public transportation was second to none, for one thing, because people had to move. But to come here to live in a suburban environment was a foreign concept. When we first came here I remember my mother was like, “Are we out in the country or something?” because suburbia was not—you know there was no suburbia in the Soviet Union. There were farms, there were cities, and the farm area wasn’t desired. It wasn’t looked upon as something anybody yearned for. I got carried away. My father got to the point where he wanted to emigrate to Israel. People were writing letters from Israel and painting rosy pictures, telling people, “Come! Come!” Mind you, all of these letters were censored by the Soviets. A lot of stuff was even blacked out or something and letters never made it because every letter--my understanding is that any communication coming into the Soviet Union from outside was opened by the KGB. They had a whole department of people that did nothing but read this mail. Likewise any communication leaving the Soviet Union was censored as well, or at least examined. My father got the urge to want to leave. This is 1972. This is right--Munich just happened, okay, and it [emigration] wasn’t [40:00] really as anti-Semitism driven, even though it had a big part of it, it wasn’t so much driven by the desire to live a Jewish life either for that matter, because again, in the Soviet Union it was very hard to know what Jewish life was for many people. For other people it was not because of family tradition and survivors, and whatnot. My understanding is that the desire to live a Jewish life was not as big of an impetus as everybody outside of the Soviet Union thought that it would be for the Soviet Jews. As you can tell, many Soviet Jews even after coming here, yes, they identify as being Jewish, they partake in Jewish life, but they’re not exactly becoming Orthodox either. My father wanted to leave. I think his motivation was more economically driven than religiously driven or spiritually driven. My mother was against it because of her fear

9 more than anything. She was not very susceptible to change. My father was actually ready to leave by himself. My mother acquiesced, so to say. I remember we applied for an exit visa in November of ’72. In the Soviet Union, in order to leave the Soviet Union you had to give up your citizenship if you were a citizen and in the Soviet Union those days, you became a bona fide citizen, they handed you your red passport, at age 16. Prior to 16, you’re not a citizen yet. Part of the exit process was that anyone that’s a citizen had to pay 900 rubles to give up their citizenship. Let me put into perspective what 900 rubles is. My mother, who was an accountant, was making about 35, 40 rubles a month. My grandmother, who was a retired schoolteacher, her pension was approximately 20, 25 rubles a month. My father, who was a butcher, his official salary was probably 40-50 rubles a month. The Soviets wanted 900 rubles for you to pay in order to grant you an exit visa for your citizenship. My middle brother was due to turn 16 on February 5th of 1973. We applied for an exit visa in November of ‘72. We were granted an exit visa on February 25th I want to say. February 25th we all of a sudden have to pay an extra 900 rubles because my brother just turned 16 and became a citizen. My oldest brother was 18 already, or he was turning 18, so he wasn’t an issue.

SM: Right.

VC: I was way too young. We were granted an exit visa on February 25th. And when you’re granted an exit visa, we were given 30 days to get our affairs in order and get out, otherwise the exit visa expires. The process began and there was a lot of misnomers at this time. This was early in the whole immigration wave. So there were many misnomers as to what to bring with you, what to not bring with you. There were also limitations. Soviets imposed “legal limitations,” what you could and could not take out of the Soviet Union. For example, you couldn’t take out jewelry beyond a wedding ring, perhaps. I remember hearing stories about people literally swallowing jewelry just to cross the border, kind of a thing, you know, all kinds of stuff. One of the perfect examples I’ll give you, you were not allowed to take out anything that was, I believe, less than or more than—I’m sorry. You were not allowed to take anything with you that was less than, like, a year or three years old, I can’t remember now, and the perfect example I have for you is I played an accordion. My accordion was a popular--in the Soviet Union, it was a popular name, a German-made accordion. It was called Weltmeister or something. I always kept [45:00] it shiny and clean, it was in the case, and when we took the train from Kiev to a border city called Chop--it was on the border of Czechoslovakia—the customs, Soviet customs is the army, I remember they held us up, made us miss our train. We had to spend the night in the terminal, for morning train that physically exited the Russian border, but they strip searched us and I had my accordion with me. They would not let us take the accordion out of the country because when they opened it, they saw how clean it was. We didn’t have any kind of proof of purchase. They presumed that it was too new to be taken out of the country. Here I am, a 12 year old kid, and this 18 year old soldier kind of rips it out of my hands and I fall. That upset my father so he went at the soldier. Next thing I know, there’s several soldiers holding my father back. They strip searched us, including my grandmother, who

10 at the time, let’s see, this was March of ’73 and the previous November she would have turned 75. She was born in ’98--74. So she was 74 years old. She was afflicted with Alzheimer’s to the deepest degree possible, she was literally, by the time we left Russia, she was a blank stare, she was just like an infant, could do nothing, not even take a step by herself. They strip-searched this woman. They strip-searched me, a 12 year old kid, my mother, every one of us. So, backing up a little bit, when we got the exit visa my parents were deciding what to take, what not to take, what to sell, what not to sell. I remember going with my father to this place where they packed up some of our furniture. We had it shipped by ship, by sea ship. I remember him paying off these guys for allowing certain things that were technically not allowed. The Soviet regime was incredibly corrupt. Across the entire spectrum, I don’t think there was a single element of the Soviet economy that was not corrupt. It was just the way of life. I remember my dad paying off these customs people. I remember them sealing our crates. A lot of the stuff was being shipped, and it took a month and a half or so to get to Israel. I remember that there was a lot of water damage. Bottom line is we got our affairs in order as much as we could. There was a big party that night we took an early morning train out of Kiev, and I remember the night before, nobody went to bed, our apartment was empty. Neighbors, friends brought food. It was a farewell party. We had an entire entourage that went to the train station with us. I remember getting on the train, and my older brother reminds me of this almost every time. As we get on the train I started wailing, I said, “I want to go home!” blah, blah, blah. It just became somewhat disturbing to me, not understanding everything. So we, bottom line is, some of these things I told you about, the door being set on fire and the teacher smacking me, I remember my dad came to the school to request transcripts, school transcripts for my brothers and I. They gave him a hard time and he had to go and pay somebody to have them translated, and I actually have copies of them. I have the original Russian transcripts. If you’re interested, I can provide, I had them scanned and everything. It was very difficult. Everything, everything--there were roadblocks. You had to grease palms; you had to jump over hoops. Nothing was a simple organized process. Everything was made difficult intentionally. This is what my parents had to deal with. Keep in mind, you’re talking about a couple of people in their early forties willing to give up their entire life and go someplace where they know virtually no one. They have no family and they don’t know the language [50:00]. They are trucking three kids and a senile parent with them. This is—so.

SM: So I understand that your father wanted to go to Israel.

VC: Yes.

SM: But then how do you end up in Cleveland? What’s the arrival in Cleveland like?

VC: You’re asking a loaded question. I don’t know how much time you have?

11

SM: That’s the only kind I ask. Just checking to make sure it’s [the recorder] still going. This goes for, like, eight hours.

VC: Alright, okay.

SM: We’re fine!

VC: I guess I need to rewind a little bit. Our intent all along, my father’s intent, and I say my father’s because my mother went reluctantly; to this day I will say she left reluctantly. My father was the driving force; my father’s intent was always, always, always to go to Israel. America was never, not that I remember, never a consideration. Perhaps in his mind it was, but our intent was always to go to Israel, and we went to Israel. We left Russia; we took a train, as I mentioned, through all of Ukraine to this border city called Chop. We got on a train the next morning and went through Czechoslovakia, at the time. The first stop we made was in Zilina, a city called Zilina. I can’t remember which is Slovakia, and which is Czech Republic, but the second stop we made was in Bratislava, which was the capital of Czechoslovakia at the time. I remember Bratislava, my father and brothers were indulging in the Czech beer which was very famous for being good beer, as well as that was my first taste of chewing gum because chewing gum was actually illegal in the Soviet Union, even though there was plenty of contraband I had never tasted it. That was my first taste of chewing gum. From Zilina there we took a train to Vienna. I’m going to sidebar into certain stories you may or may not find of value, I’ll let you be the judge of that.

SM: Go ahead, go ahead.

VC: I remember we were pulling up to Vienna. It was very late at night, dark, and I remember the train coming to a stop before we pulled into the station, and I remember some gentlemen coming aboard the train. They’re walking through the train, and in Russian and Yiddish, now mind you a couple of these people are soldiers, and there’s a guy in a trench coat. They’re asking for people who are en route to Israel, primarily Soviet émigrés en route to Israel. I believe we were the only family on that train at the time. They asked us to get our belongings and to come with them. My dad obviously felt comfortable enough, you know, was satisfied that this was a copacetic entourage to join, so that’s what we did. Again, this was outside of the train station, I don’t know how far outside but it was in the woods somewhere. I remember they picked us up and they drove us to a castle. My recollection, I don’t know exactly, my recollection of the name of the castle is Schoenau or something. I don’t remember what it was called. My understanding is that this was a castle donated to the state of Israel by somebody. The state of Israel used it as a place, as a staging point for various refugees. I remember we were in this castle for about a week. Our family was allocated the closet room. This was a gargantuan room with walls consisting of closets. The six of us were--this was our sleeping quarters. This is where we stayed while we were in Vienna. I guess it was a

12 staging point until a flight could take us to Tel Aviv. This was a, just part of security measures. Keep in mind; this was not long after Munich.

SM: Okay.

VC: After the Olympics, the Munich Olympics. [Transcriber’s note: During the 1972 Munich Olympics, a group of eleven Israeli athletes, coaches, and officials were murdered by Palestinian terrorists called the Black Septembers.] I remember, as a matter of fact, the grounds were guarded. I remember my brother and I walking the grounds which were very wooded in some [55:00] sections. I remember bumping into something. Again, I’m a 12 year old kid, I look up and it’s a soldier the size of the green giant on the beans box. He’s not only fully outfitted, but he’s got a machine gun, and a gun. This is a bona fide warrior standing in front of me. This is how the grounds were guarded. He wasn’t the only one there, either. One other interesting aspect was I remember when it was the day for us to leave and go to the airport. There were, I want to say, maybe four families all together by then. Maybe that’s why we were there for a week, to wait for others to arrive. There was four or five families and they put us in this bus. The bus--we go on the bus to the airport, but we don’t just go on a bus. There is motorcycles in the front of the motorcade, there is a couple of armed, armored jeeps in front of the bus, a couple behind the bus, more motorcycles, police motorcycles behind them, police cars. This is the motorcade, and we go from this castle to the airport nonstop. We don’t stop at a single traffic light, nonstop. We don’t go very fast per se, but this is our only view of Vienna; we go through the city. I remember it was the first time we ever--we passed an automobile dealership. I had never seen a car indoors. It was fascinating to see a car behind glass windows. I just remember that drive, and how beautiful Vienna was, and how clean the city was. We get to the airport, and there was no terminal to go into. They literally open the gate as we pull up to the airport, a fence gate, and the motorcade continues. Well, the motorcycles didn’t, but the jeeps and the bus continued through the gate, and on the tarmac is a plane with soldiers standing around it, with jeeps circling it. We pull up to this plane with a staircase next to it. We’re told very quickly, in an organized manner, please go up and get into the plane. That’s what happened. Literally, no sooner than the door got closed and the plane started moving, and these jeeps would follow down the runway as the plane would takeoff. The next stop was Tel Aviv. When we got to Tel Aviv, I remember by now they already had this organized with a welcoming committee, so to say. They had a process; the Israelis had a process in order with Russian-speaking people. Because we didn’t have anyone, we weren’t going to any family. My recollection is they pretty much assigned you somewhere within the country. I know my father knew perhaps of Haifa and Tel Aviv. I’m not sure how much more he knew. My recollection from hearing him talk about it in later years is that, look, Israelis were interested in populating all of Israel, right? There were a lot of newer communities and whatnot, and so I guess my father was told that the community they were sending us to, which was Kiryat Shmona, which was in northern Israel, it was eight kilometers south of Metula, and Metula was the border. Actually, Lebanon kind of comes down a bit, in a similar fashion as the Gaza does from

13 the south. Lebanon comes down on the northeast a little bit, just above Haifa and to the west of it is the extension of Israel, and that’s where we were. My father was told that it’s a suburb of Haifa. That was nowhere near a suburb of Haifa. It was a newer community. So were put in a cab, I remember, in a Mercedes cab, and driven to our new home in Kiryat Shmona. There was an apartment ready for us. This was all, you know, the Israelis had this down to a science. My parents, I remember, were extremely disappointed by where we were settled, because again it was a small new community. They [1:00:00] envisioned a Tel Aviv and a Haifa kind of thing. They wound up in Ashtabula, if you will, or Painesville or something, right?

SM: Right, right!

VC: It was disappointing to them, but we lived there for three months. Then we—I’m sorry, we lived there for—yeah, I believe it was three months, and then we moved to Petah Tikva, which was 14 kilometers from Tel Aviv. Petah Tikva was more of a suburban Tel Aviv type of thing. That was our seven months in Israel. I was there during the 25th, what is it, Yom Ha’atzmaut, Independence Day. I remember that was in April shortly after we arrived, April of ’73 was the 25th anniversary of the state of Israel. I remember going to school a little bit between March and June, but again, I knew zero Hebrew, absolute zero Hebrew, so my school experience was very limited. Even though I recall there was some special classes for Russian speaking kids, and you know, there was a bit of a Russian community already, even in Kiryat Shmona. It wasn’t very large, because this was the beginning of the wave, but we weren’t the only ones there. Anyway, we moved to Petah Tikva, and this was already summertime, and I went to school in Petah Tikva. Because we left in October, my school experience was extremely limited. I have virtually no recollection of it. I remember, we went there and we lived in Petah Tikva, and then we were--my mother was very unhappy in Israel, and she was unhappy for two primary reasons. Reason number one is she was very--she had incredible trepidations about her sons going into the army in a war-torn part of the world. To bolster that, well, let me rephrase that, so that was one of her chief concerns. The other is she truly hated hot weather. I don’t know what her metabolic makeup was, but she actually had a heat stroke in Israel, so she did not take well to the summer heat. She was hospitalized for the heat stroke. She really was unhappy in Israel. My father was not really getting ahead anywhere. He didn’t really have skills. He was a butcher in Russia, but in Israel to be a butcher you’ve got to know some Kashrut rules and whatnot. That wasn’t his education. He could have learned. Anyways, he wasn’t exactly--I don’t know how much he wanted to leave, actually, I really don’t. They ultimately decided to go to America. What the impetus of that was, I would surmise conversations with people. I remember one particular instance where somebody came from Miami. There was a visitor from Miami, Russian speaking. He had been living in America for, like, I don’t know, 20-30 years. He must have come after World War II. I remember he was--we were sitting at dinner with some other neighbors or something, and he was a relative of the neighbors. He was telling stories about what life was like in America, how teenagers drive cars to school and so on and so forth. He was, you know, he appeared to be a man of means. I don’t

14 know much beyond that, but that in combination with just the general conversation, the general rumor mill, if you will, among the Soviet community, is that perhaps America had a little better life to offer than Israel at that time. My parents decided to go to America. The way you go to America is you had to go through Rome because HIAS, I guess, had their center in Rome [1:05:00]. You had to go through HIAS because of, as I come to find later in life, immigration laws, et cetera. So we needed to go to Rome. When my parents decided on this they wound up getting tickets. My recollection is that they got tickets for a ship, a seafaring ship. I’m assuming it was a cruise ship, because it was cheaper than the plane or whatever. Our tickets were for the 6th of October, for us to depart on the 6th of October—I’m sorry. On the 9th of October, okay, was our departure date. Well, the 6th of October, the Yom Kippur War breaks out [transcriber’s note: The Yom Kippur War, lasting from October 6-25 in 1973, was a conflict between Israel and the Arab states of Egypt and Syria over disputed territory]. When the war started—[transcriber’s note: tape interrupted at 1:05:55] Let me resume.

SM: Yeah, let’s start again.

VC: So, again, the war broke out on the 6th, and when the war broke out my understanding is the only thing that got in and out of Israel was the military and El Al [transcriber’s note: El Al is the Israeli national airline service, established in 1948]. I remember my dad wound up doing whatever. My mom and my middle brother wound up leaving Israel on a plane, I want to say on October 21st or so, to Rome, which had its own set of challenges. My father wound up staying for another month. Prior to that we liquidated our belongings, I remember going to the market, which was a few blocks from our apartment building and we were selling anything and everything. We basically left with a couple of suitcases, literally. My parents were not people of means. We did not smuggle jewelry or anything, any valuables out of the Soviet Union. We didn’t have much. I remember, I remember, hearing my parents’ conversation: we came here we had seven hundred dollars and a couple of suitcases, as a family, and this was four people, and I’ll get to why only four came here where six of us left the Soviet Union.

SM: Okay.

VC: My oldest brother wound up staying in Israel because, remember, I told you he has a different mother. His mother’s family, which was a large extended family that he’s close to, were planning on coming to Israel, and he and my father were not getting along well. He was 18 years old, so they were not getting along well. He was 18, so he could make the choice and he decided to stay in Israel, which he did. As a matter of fact, while I was in Rome, and when my father was leaving Israel a month later, he and my brother had a major falling out, and actually they lost contact until I found him through my own investigation here a decade later.

SM: Okay.

15

VC: Anyway, so my father joined us in Rome with my grandmother. Again, we’re talking about a 75 year old individual at this point who can’t even take a step by herself. He joined us a month later in Rome. We were in a, we rented one bedroom out of a three bedroom apartment in Rome. I remember we were right off of Via XX Settembre [transcriber’s note: The Via XX Settembre is a major road in Rome]. There was an embassy of some sort across the street from us. I remember we used to walk through their courtyard. We were in Rome for four months, which was longer than your average family at the time. The reason for it is because my mother fell ill--I’m sorry, my grandmother fell ill, and she wound up passing away in Rome. She is buried in Rome in the only cemetery inside of the city of Rome, one of the oldest cemeteries in the world that has a little Jewish section, and that’s where she’s buried. I have never seen the grave, but I remember after the funeral we didn’t really have money and I remember the graves [1:10:00]--the cemetery workers, you know, my father took out, I don’t know, twenty dollars, I don’t even know how much it was, and it wasn’t enough for a headstone, and they wound up digging into their own pockets and contributing. I remember my mother leaving them a picture of my grandmother to put on the headstone. I have never seen it. One of my wishes is to one day make it there and see it. I have literally one picture of my grandmother. It’s the passport photo from when we left Russia. That’s the only picture I have of my grandmother. My family was not big on taking pictures or anything. That’s why four of us came here, and six left the Soviet Union. After four months, after my grandmother passed away, they actually made us wait because, my understanding is, well, so this is--I’ll use this as a segue into how we came to Cleveland, which was part of your question. My understanding and recollection is that when the Soviet refugees registered with HIAS--HIAS’ work involved helping with processing immigration papers properly, as well as getting the federations of major metropolitan communities in the States to sponsor families. As you know, sponsorship involved assistance for the first few months with housing and with initial life needs. And they got the Jewish community, business community, to hire émigrés as well. My understanding is, we were one of the first Soviet families to be sponsored by the Cleveland Jewish community. Well, let me back up. How we got to Cleveland. So, HIAS was getting the Jewish community’s sponsorships, and at the time it was the big cities, New York, LA, Chicago, Miami--the big cities were sponsoring and absorbing much of the Soviet Jewry. I remember the first city that sponsored us was LA. My mother found out that LA has a similar climate to Israel. As I mentioned to you, that was a caveat. She wound up making inquiries in HIAS, letting them know that she really didn’t want to go. I guess at some point she was asked where she would like to go, and the way I remember the story, she asked somebody what city in America has a similar climate to Kiev, which is a beautiful four season climate.

SM: Yeah!

VC: It was very dry, not that Cleveland is dry, but it was a beautiful four season climate. And literally, on the money, it was like September 1st fall was there kind of thing, June 1st summer was there, December 1st the snow fell, you know. So somebody opens a

16 world map and traces a finger from Kiev to America and lands on Cleveland, and says here, Cleveland, it’s on a lake, big lake just like Kiev, so that must be a similar climate, same latitude, whatever. So my mother actually went and asked if we could go to Cleveland or a city that has a similar climate. We wound up getting sponsored by Cleveland. We were one of the first families--my understanding, you probably can ask JFSA for more accurate information, but my understanding is we were one of the first families to be sponsored by Cleveland Federation. As a matter of fact, when we came here my recollection is there was only two other families here. One was from Leningrad, and they came directly here. The other one was from a smaller city in Ukraine. They actually wound up here, somehow they came up from Miami is my recollection. So today, well, when we came here each of the other families had a son my brother’s age. There was nobody my age until later on. People tell me, “You don’t have an accent, the Russian accent.” The reason I don’t have an accent is twofold. One is [1:15:00] research shows for children, age 13 happens to be that point in life where you either retain or shed an accent depending on your circumstances. My circumstances were such that I was thrown into the American community, and for lack of a better term, forced to assimilate. I never really had a Russian circle of friends because there were no Russian kids my age. If you talk to either of my brothers you would have never thought that we were related. My oldest brother, I cannot even understand when he speaks English to this day, and he’s been here thirty years already. My brother who passed away, his English was pretty good but he still had an accent, a pretty thick accent. That’s how we wound up in Cleveland.

SM: Tell me about your family’s adjustment to Cleveland and especially your experiences in school.

VC: Here?

SM: Yeah.

VC: When I came here we were, as I mentioned to you, we were held back by an extra week or two in Rome from leaving, and the reason for that, my understanding was because JFSA, who, as you know, was the arm of the federation empowered with, or entrusted with the absorption of refugees, they rented a second floor of a duplex on Desota [transcriber’s note: Desota Avenue in Cleveland Heights]. I remember 3266 Desota in Cleveland Heights, three doors away from Sinai Synagogue. My understanding is that we were held back because they were doing some remodeling, painting, whatever. So when we came here--I don’t know how much detail you want me to go into.

SM: I mean, just generally speaking. You’ve got a lot of detail.

VC: If it’s too much, feel free to tell me.

17

SM: It’s okay! It’s great detail.

VC: Is there—are you planning on some sort of a follow up? What’s your process in all this?

SM: Well, so, the process is the interview, the transcription of the interview, and then we’ll review the interview with the interviewee much later. That will be, really, much later.

VC: For verification purposes? But, I mean, do you plan on getting more details at any point, are you looking for that?

SM: If you have other materials, for example, if you mentioned you had family materials or something like that. If you have documents you think are appropriate to donate, certainly. I would love to get each interviewee into the Historical Society so they can see the library and the archives.

VC: Oh, I would love, I mean, once you have it. Right, you’re talking, once you have--

SM: Well, no, really, at any point. It’s always helpful for people to see. So you could bring you and your family.

VC: I would love to see that. I think my kids would be more impressed if they saw me as part of it, but you’re right, it would be nice. So anyway, when we came here I was 13 years old. There was a dilemma in Cleveland Heights. The dilemma was that we lived a stone's throw away from Roosevelt Junior High School, which was off the corner of Euclid Heights and Lee Boulevard, or Euclid Heights Boulevard and Lee. We were literally three doors up from Euclid Heights Boulevard and the bottom of Desota. The top of Desota was Taylor Road; bottom of Desota was right by Euclid Heights and Lee, so literally a stone’s throw away from Roosevelt. The problem is that the Cleveland Heights school district at the time was phasing out Roosevelt. That was Roosevelt’s last year of operation. At that time the junior high schools had 7th through 9th grade in them. Cleveland Heights had four junior high schools. They had Roosevelt, Monticello, Wiley in University Heights, and Roxbury in the southwest corner of Cleveland Heights. Roosevelt was being phased out, so the only thing Roosevelt had that school year, and keep in mind this is February when we came here. So that school year was only 8th and 9th grade, and then they were done, they were leveling the school. My age dictated for me to go into 7th grade. The nearest school that I could go into 7th grade was Monticello. But Monticello was a little ways away, it’s on Monticello Boulevard. The concept of school buses was completely foreign to me; furthermore, when I came here I spoke two words: yes and [1:20:00] no because I took French for foreign language in Russia. I was told--it so happens there was a young man in his late 20s who was working for JFSA. He happened to major in Russian studies, to the point where he actually studied in Leningrad for a while, and his Russian was extremely good. He was a councilor

18 employed by JFSA for the Russian absorption program. He would tell me, “You have to go up to Taylor Road in the morning and wait for the bus.” So after a week of missing this bus and walking to school to Monticello, which, listen, for me it was no big deal, my school in Russia was probably farther away. If you talk to anybody about a kid walking from the bottom of Desota to Monticello they’d be flabbergasted, right? Obviously being late to school, that combined with the fact that Monticello didn’t yet have any special English classes. Here I am 13 years old at this point, I’m sitting in a classroom, you know, they throw me into the school, they give me a schedule, and I go from room to room and I sit there like a dummy. I understand absolutely nothing, except for one thing, and that is math. Math was always second nature to me. I learned math on an abacus. My father used an abacus in his meat department, because he always had meat on his hands. He used an abacus that he could hose down. There’s no adding machine or anything, so to calculate things he used an abacus, so I learned math on an abacus. My mother was an accountant in Russia, so numbers ran in my family. Math was always very easy to me, and second nature. Here I am at Monticello, going from classroom to classroom, I know nothing, all I can do is see and figure things out. But math, now I’m in the ball park. My recollection is I was in this math class, and this is 7th grade. The teacher is doing three and four digit addition problems on the blackboard. I cannot so much as articulate the answer to her. I don’t know how to pronounce it. But, I raise my hand. I’m not a shy guy, I never have been. Believe me, after you go from country to country for a while and you live in Rome for four months where hand gestures ARE the language, there’s not a shy bone in your body after that, okay? Israel is the same thing. I raise my hand and I can’t even tell her the answer. And she is absolutely flabbergasted by the fact that I have my hand raised before she even turns around after she writes the problem down, while other kids are sitting with a pencil or a calculator trying to figure it out. She has to walk up to me so I can write the answer for her, or she calls me to the blackboard so I have to write the answer because I can’t say it. She was just in awe of this. The combination of my inability to make it to school on time, my math prowess, and then they--remember how I told you my father had the academic transcripts translated? They took a look at that as well, and they decided to put me into 8th grade at Roosevelt, so I jumped a year instantly. Not that that was any better, but at least I could get out of bed at 8:25 and be in the classroom at 8:30. That was my initial introduction to US education. At the end of that year, Roosevelt got leveled, and the surviving 9th grade from Roosevelt was actually placed into Heights High. I guess at that time we were the only 9th graders to ever be in Heights High at that point. It was just for that one year. The following year the other junior high school kids joined us. I was at Heights for four years, while most of my peers were only there for three years. At Heights, I will never forget Mrs. Metelsky [transcriber’s note: Probable spelling, as an Ancestry.com entry lists a Dorothy Metelsky living in Cleveland Heights in 1940. She would have been in her mid-fifties, early sixties, when Chernomorets was entering Cleveland Heights High School], probably my favorite teacher of all time. Mrs. Metelsky was a woman who lived in University Heights, and she became the special English teacher for the foreigners. She would travel at that time from Heights to Monticello to the junior school, wherever the Russians were. Her job was to sit for several periods with the émigrés. And by the way,

19 while the majority of us were former Soviets, there were others [1:25:00]. I remember there was a kid named Paul whose family emigrated from Italy and he was learning English. Bottom line is she was teaching what they called special, what they called Special English classes. It was basically English as a new language kind of a thing. She was wonderful; she had the patience of a saint. I remember her own son was at Heights at that time. She was spending time with us, teaching us English. For children language is much easier than for adults. I remember the Jewish community had English classes at the JCC, the old JCC on Mayfield; it was a couple of nights a week. The kids would go up there and do all kinds of shenanigans, including they had a game room with ping pong tables and bumper pool. We would all conjugate there. Conjugate is not the right word, but you get the idea. The kids would do their thing or go swimming for that matter. In the evening, they would have evening classes for Russians to learn English. It was also a social event for everybody. But for kids in school it was a lot easier than for adults. That was quite a bit of our time. To me personally, English was the eighth-ninth language I had to learn. Not to say that I speak eight-nine languages but between being born into a Russian language and hearing my father speak--my father’s first language was Yiddish actually, he also spoke broken Russian. So I learned a little bit of Yiddish. I took French in school in Russia. We had to study Ukrainian because I was in Kiev. Then in Italy I had to learn a little bit of Italian just to get around. From a learning standpoint English was already x number language for me to learn. But it was also, I also found English to be the most difficult. I also learned Hebrew. Hebrew I mastered very easily, very fast. As a matter of fact by the time we were leaving Israel, native Israelis would find it hard to believe that I was a foreigner because of how well I spoke Hebrew for a 12 year old kid. I mean, listen, I wouldn’t be a translator for the prime minister, but for a 12 year old kid, I mastered the language pretty good, and it was a lot easier. English was by far the hardest language to learn, and it took me probably, I want to say, a good 18 months before I was comfortable forming what I felt would be a coherent sentence, and it was a good three years--I’m sorry. It was a good 18 months before I could understand most of what was said to me. It was probably a good three years before I was in my comfort zone of formulating what I felt was an accurate and coherent sentence, and speaking. Today English is my primary language, far more so than Russian even. As a matter of fact last night I was at the Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces guys’ night out fundraiser. I remember there was a couple of Russian-speaking, younger men in their early 30s, and they were speaking broken Russian and they recognized me from the Schvitz [transcriber’s note: A shvitz is an Eastern European Jewish steam bath, and the Schvitz is a Turkish-Russian bathhouse/spa in Cleveland]. We started speaking Russian and they were amazed at how well my Russian is. And my relatives even in Boston tell me how I speak with no Russian accent or anything. But yet, Russian is much more difficult for me than English at this point in my life.

SM: How did your parents adjust? What did they end up doing here in the Cleveland area?

20

VC: Their adjustment was very different obviously. My father, he was a butcher so JFSA tried to get him, part of what JFSA did is try to help people find jobs and employment, so they helped him get a job as a butcher. I think at first they tried the local kosher butcher shops in Cleveland Heights. That didn’t go over too well because my father was not educated in the Kashrut laws. So there were issues. He was also not a person who was a good subordinate, if you will. He kind of marched to the beat of his own drummer [1:30:00]. I remember he got a job at Dinner Bell Meats. I don’t know if they’re still around but they were a big meat processing plant in Cleveland. It was completely out of his comfort zone. Keep in mind, in Russia he was a one man department, he may have had an apprentice, I remember he had an apprentice actually, but he did the whole thing. Short of slaughtering, he did everything. He got half a cow, he chopped it up, he put it in the case, he weighed it. Everything was sold by weight, not prepackaged like here. When you went to buy meat, it was literally like going to a butcher shop. You’re looking at the meat in the cooler, and you tell them what you want, and they cut it for you, and they trim it, they do whatever. I remember there was a rule that he had to operate on. For every kilogram of meat that he sold he had to include 100g of bone, because obviously waste. Rather than raising prices the Soviets wanted him to include bone. He had a certain way that he learned to come here. Dinner Bell was nothing more than an assembly line that he worked under. Hey, Josh.

JOSH CHERNOMORETS: Hello!

VC: This is Nathan’s twin, Joshua.

SM: Hi there.

JC: I would shake your hand but I have cement on my hands.

SM: That’s okay.

VC: No, did you guys really?

JC: Yeah!

VC: Did you put your initials in?

JC: No, we put our names, yo!

VC: Oh, good. Oh, God. The city just did some repair in the sewer cleanouts where they had to replace the slab. You saw them pouring it when you walked in. This is Sean Martin; he’s from the Western Reserve Historical Society.

JC: Oh! Good to meet you Sean.

21

VC: He is doing a project on Soviet Jewry.

JC: Pleased to meet you, I’m Josh.

SM: Nice to meet you.

VC: So anyways, my father at Dinner Bell, they put him in an assembly line. This is a man who doesn’t know from an assembly line. That wasn’t working out very well. Then one of the largest, at some point, one of the largest benevolent employers in the Jewish community, believe it or not in the ‘70s, were the Bedol family. Marshall, Alan, and Jutty [transcriber’s note: Perhaps a nickname for Justin Bedol] Bedol, the three brothers, Marshall and Alan are twins, and it was called MarshAllan Manufacturing and they were at West 85th and Madison and they manufactured little tray, dinner tray things out of tin and aluminum or something, very inexpensive stuff sold at drug stores and whatnot. They were hiring Russians en masse. My father wound up going to work there. I can’t remember how long he worked there, but I remember he had some sort of an injury in his back so he wound up going out on disability. That took him all the way through to his passing. The adjustment was not very easy. My parents were not very ambitious people. They didn’t know how, perhaps. My mother was probably the most pessimistic person I’ve ever met in my life. She actually yearned to go back to Kiev because, again, as I mentioned before, good, bad, or indifferent, that’s all you know and when you come here there is a whole set of things that you have to do that you were never a part of, okay. It’s not that fact that, you know, freedom is not appreciated, or all of the extra things are not appreciated. It’s a matter of not knowing how to take advantage, how to live with it, how to be a part of it because, again, you just spent 40--more than half your life living a certain way. My mother, because of the language, obviously she was not able to do accounting, but she had a skill. She was great with a needle and thread, and a sewing machine. She became a seamstress here.

SM: Okay.

VC: As a matter of fact, she worked for Diamond’s Men’s shops. She was one of the first ones hired at Saks when they opened in 70--I want to say ’78 when Beachwood Place opened, and when Saks came into town she was one of the seamstresses, one of the first ones hired there [1:35:00]. She never learned the language well. She never tried to learn the language well. It was very difficult. I remember her sitting at home crying profusely, wanting to go back to Kiev for probably three years when we came here. She suffered from depression, severe depression, tremendously. For a person like that it is very difficult to readjust. For my parents it was not easy. They made what they could out of it. I will be forever grateful to my father and my mother for bringing me here because, you know.

SM: Just a few more questions, a couple more questions I guess. How would you describe your parents’ Jewish identity, your Jewish identity? How would you describe

22 yourself--as Jewish, as Russian, as American? What kinds of affiliations do you have to the Jewish community? What kinds of groups were your family involved in, or have you become involved in?

VC: As I mentioned to you before, the Soviet Jews’ desire to leave the Soviet Union was unbalanced, much less precipitated, by spiritual desires--far more political and economic desires than anything else. Notwithstanding that, many people did want to get into the Jewishness of life if you will, from a spiritual standpoint. My family was not one of those families. In Israel we would go to temple because the community certainly made it very easy and very available for you to become part of the spiritual and Jewish community. It was not something that my parents were drawn to. You know, as a matter of fact, I have a bit of a story, I don’t know if you’re interested, but when we came to Israel, in the Soviet Union circumcision was not practiced as a society.

JC: This is a good one.

VC: My father was circumcised because he was born in a Shtetl, but my brothers and I were not, and I remember when we got to Israel, my father took my brothers and I on a bus to Haifa. I guess it was prescheduled. He wanted us to get circumcised, and this had to be done in a hospital, we were already young men. I remember we went to Haifa and the morning we got to the hospital, and you can Google this or something, there was a doctor’s strike in Israel in 1973 [transcriber’s note: Indeed, in 1973 Israeli doctors went on strike for a month, and patient mortality dropped by 50%]. The morning we got there the doctors walked out. I’m sure if you Google it you will find something on it. If you want the date you will find the date by Googling it. So it didn’t happen.

SM: Okay.

VC: Then the next thing I remember was when we were in Rome; I turned 13 while we were in Rome. I remember my father taking me to the Synagogue in Rome, and he talked to the Rabbi in Yiddish, and he wanted me to get bar mitzvah. Again, the term bar mitzvah had a different meaning. The term bar mitzvah to my father, who was not bar mitzvahed himself, because of World War II, you know he turned 13 during World War II, the term bar mitzvah to them probably meant a blessing of some sort from the Rabbi. It was different than what we know or practice today as a bar mitzvah ritual, so we went to the synagogue. I remember him talking to the Rabbi and from what I ascertained later from him talking to my mom was--the gist of it was that the Rabbi said you can’t just bring a kid in and have him bar mitzvahed. There is a preparatory process that takes place. He said, “You were in Israel and you didn’t do anything, and you’re going to America so, you know [1:40:00].” My dad kind of twisted it a little and said to the rabbi, “Oh, you left Israel? Oh we don’t wanna—you know,” but I don’t think that’s what it was. I think the gist of it was that the Rabbi probably said to him, “Listen, you’re going to America, but a bar mitzvah doesn’t have to take place at 13. Ideally it should, but it’s not necessary. When you get to America you’ll be able to prepare him and get him bar

23 mitzvahed along with your other sons.” So that didn’t happen. I kind of branched off, but when we came here the Jewish community was extremely welcoming. The Jewish Family Service was populating all the Russians in the Cleveland Heights area. At that time Cleveland Heights was extremely Orthodox, with the Hebrew Academy and everything, and I remember the Chabadniks and the Orthodox community were trying to recruit us. As a matter of fact, one of the first things I remember in 1974, there was a Rabbi and Rebbetzin Kazen. They were incredibly—they themselves were from the former Soviet Union, they were refugees, they were orthodox. I believe they were--they came here on Rabbi Schneersohn’s order from New York. The Rebbetzin told them to go to Cleveland. As a matter of fact, are you familiar with the Solon Chabad at all?

SM: Yeah.

VC: You know Rabbi Zushe Greenberg, right? His wife Miriam is a cousin of the Kazens. Okay?

SM: Okay.

VC: Anyway, they were very active in trying to get the Russian community to embrace Judaism. They were Orthodox, so their interest was in the Orthodox sect. As a matter of fact, I remember they organized a bus trip to New York to hear the Rebbe. Are you Jewish?

SM: I am not Jewish, but I know what you’re talking about.

VC: But obviously, dealing with this, you know what a rebbe is?

SM: Yeah, yeah.

VC: The Rebbe, I think his name was Schneersohn—oh my God. He was the—

SM: Rabbi Schneersohn.

VC: Yeah, the “Grand Poobah” for the Orthodox community in Brooklyn, right?

SM: Right, right.

VC: They organized the bus trip, all expenses paid to New York, and they billed it as a bus trip to New York. They failed to mention a few things, just like, often times happens. So obviously a lot of the Russian émigrés took advantage. Everybody wants to go see New York. They kind of failed to mention that the purpose of this trip was to go to Brooklyn, stay with Orthodox families, okay? These are customs that most Russians are not aware of--not brushing your teeth on Saturday, not turning the lights on, not having anything in your pocket. You’re talking about a demographic that’s foreign to it. These

24 rabbis, they make this trip, and the crux of the trip was because the Rebbe was speaking that weekend. She wanted to energize the people to get excited or whatever. I remember we went on this trip, and I remember as we’re pulling up to New York City, everyone on the bus is yelling, “Go down Broadway, we want to see Broadway,” blah, blah, blah, because, you know, it wasn’t going to be that way. We were going to Brooklyn. But everybody thought nobody knew the difference between the boroughs and everything. I remember we drove through Manhattan and then we go to Brooklyn, and this weekend was such a fiasco, because all these Russians are thrown into this Orthodox community for the sole purpose of hearing the Rebbe they can neither understand nor care about, within a context. They are put up with families who are very welcoming, very nice, but yet it’s an environment none of us are familiar with! We’re offending these people, literally. You’re talking about Jewishness. That was one, and that was—I want to say ’74, ’75 at the latest, I can’t remember exactly, but Rabbi Kazen and his wife--his wife more so than him, he had a shul on, I want to say on Lee Road-- but she was incredibly—what a wonderful woman she was. She just couldn’t do enough for the Russians. All they wanted was for the Russians to embrace Judaism [1:45:00], but their definition of Judaism was somewhat extreme to people who are coming from nothing. There was no religion in the Soviet Union, you know.

SM: You mentioned your involvement with the Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces. Are you involved with any other groups?

VC: Well, so let me—again, I don’t want to--what time is it?

SM: It’s about three o’clock so we should wrap up.

VC: Well, do you want to wrap up or do you want to just continue this another time?

SM: That’s up to you. I don’t know how much more you’ve got to say.

VC: Plenty.

SM: Okay, so—

VC: You’ve been with me two hours, and I’ve told you more than you wanted to know already.

SM: You’ve got a lot of detail.

VC: I don’t know how much you want to dissect or how much you’re interested in.

SM: Say just a few more words about your involvement in other organizations, and then we can talk about other things later.

25

VC: Let me go back to your question of how Jewishness came to be a part of my life, and my family by extension. I’ll try not to get into detail, and if you think details will be important we can reconvene at another time.

SM: Okay.

VC: I knew nothing about Judaism, pretty much. I went from an atheist environment in the Soviet Union to an environment of a cesspool of all kinds of stuff in Israel. As a matter of fact it was, talk about a shocker. I went from being picked on for being a Jew, in a place where I didn’t even know what being Jewish meant, except that it was a label, to a place where I was chastised as a Jew by other Jews. An example, I would ride my bike across the street past an Orthodox temple in Israel on Shabbos. They would throw stones at me for doing that. The Romanian Jews hated the Russian Jews; the Polish Jews hated the Hungarian Jews; the Moroccan Jews are considered a substandard species. This is insane, this is beyond insane. I go again from some place where it’s totally atheist to someplace where all these Jews are finally in their land and then they can’t get along, and then I come here. Again, I still don’t know much about Judaism. My exposure to Judaism has not been very favorable so far as a twelve, thirteen year old. I was never bar mitzvahed. I was in a temple but I had no idea what was going on. I was bored out of my mind. In my teen years, obviously I’m at Heights. Now I am dating a girl whose family invites me for Passover. This is my first, quote unquote, “reasonable Seder.” We were in a Seder in a kibbutz when we first got to Israel, but again, that was meaningless to me. Now I’m at my girlfriend’s family house Seder, small family, and they’re actually taking the time to educate me, to explain to me what we’re doing, okay. I’m, at this point, 15- 16 years old. So it’s an introduction, and then, you know, other things. They would point Judaisms [transcriber’s note: Chernomorets is using the proper noun “Judaism” in a plural sense here, referring to basic tenets of the religion that he was taught] to me along the way as I dated this girl. Then that was pretty much the extent of it. Then as I got older I became--I started to get curious, more in my young adulthood. I decided that I should get circumcised because even though I’m not a religious person it was the one thing, I learned that it was the one thing that solidified Abraham’s relationship with God. When God told him not to sacrifice his son, he wound up circumcising himself, is my understanding anyway. So I decided that I should get circumcised of my own accord. I did it at age 22, right before my 22nd birthday. I went to a Rabbi, and he hooked me up with a urologist, and it was done in a hospital. By then I still did not really know Judaism. I just knew that was my way of connecting to Judaism at that point in my life. Then after that I started, actually [1:50:00] the biggest, my foremost knowledge—well, let me back up. So after that, I met my first wife, and she comes from a pretty well-known and respected family in town. They’re Holocaust survivors from Poland. I participated in her family’s Jewish holidays, rituals, and then our wedding was at Park Synagogue, and you know, so on and so forth. I got a bit of education then. After we separated and divorced—well, through that process my eldest daughter was born so we had a baby naming. I had never known a baby naming. I had been to a bris, but other than that my daughter’s baby naming was an education to me. The wedding process was an

26 education to me, the Jewish process and other things. Then after we separated I was still—I considered myself Jewish even though I was never a spiritual individual. Then when I met my wife who is not Jewish—as a matter of fact, she never met--my wife probably had her first brush with a Jewish person in her late teens, early twenties. In Ankeny, Iowa there were no Jews. There were in Des Moines, but not in Ankeny, Iowa. She transferred here from Des Moines. We happened to work for an insurance company, that’s how we met. Her boss that transferred her here was actually Jewish, a Jewish guy. When Lorna and I—we had a minister and a rabbi marry us. We arranged the wedding all on our own. When we decided to—when I decided to propose to Lorna, and we were talking about a life, I never asked her to convert. The only thing I ever said was that I would like to raise our children in the Jewish traditions. That didn’t mean that I wanted to become religious or anything. To me at this point in my life, Judaism is not a religion as much as it is a philosophy, a way of life. Jewish teachings to me are very rich. They’ve taught humanity, an immeasurable amount. To me a Jewish life does not necessarily involve spiritual enlightenment. My definition of spiritual enlightenment is the need to go to a service, to observe certain rituals. I’m not that type of person. Holidays, yes. Certain big things as I would call them, yes. But I’m not a person who talks to God. To me Judaism is just a way of life, a philosophy so to say. A lot of it, believe it or not, I learned since I’ve been married to Lorna. We became engaged in Aish HaTora. I don’t know if you know what Aish HaTora is, but their mission for the most part is to enlighten people to Judaism. One of my favorite teachers, if you will, Rabbi Yehuda Appel from Aish HaTora--we got involved, we were invited to join a mixed couples Aish HaTora study group back in the mid ‘90s, and we did, right here in Solon, and Rabbi Yehuda Appel was the moderator. One of the formats that made it very nice is that rather than teaching spirituality, the goal there was to teach Jewish way of life and thinking and philosophy if you will. As an example, he would bring some papers with questions. We had a group of, let’s say, five couples [1:55:00]. We would meet like on a Tuesday night or something. He would bring these questions and hand them to everybody. It would be a conflicting question, a community question. We would debate. For example, one of the questions was, “You are living in a very small Jewish community, and you have a Jewish school. Your child is not getting what you think the child should be getting out of the school. But if you take your child out, the school cannot continue to operate. The school obviously has other Jewish kids in it. Literally the removal of one child collapses the school. What do you do?” We sit, we discuss, we share thoughts and ideas, and afterwards, Rabbi Appel pulls out the sources, and the sources is a passage from the Torah, the Talmud, whatever, that deals with that on- point issue. It tells you that your first and foremost responsibility is not the community, it is your child. It is you first, your family second, the community after. There is a hierarchy that the sources teach. That’s invaluable education to me, I appreciate that. A lot of the Jewishness that I’ve learned and embraced has been through processes like studying with Aish HaTora, and while that class didn’t last forever, people moving out of town and divorces, et cetera, I was invited later to join a businessman’s lunchtime, an Aish HaTora class, which I enjoyed immensely, but that didn’t last. Unfortunately I haven’t gotten into anything else, but occasionally I’ll be invited to join the farbrengen

27 of Chabad, which I enjoy. I have a lot of friends in Chabad. I do enjoy it, and again, I’m not--Jewishness to me is an identity of what a value of a family and community is and life is, and the sanctity of life. It is not to go to Temple and pray, and to observe these things that I just can’t comprehend. One of the reasons that I’m not a spiritual person is because if I ask a rabbi, or a learned person, “Why is this like this?” and the answer I get is, “Because God wants it that way,” you know what; we’re on different planes, buddy. All of a sudden we’re in different worlds. If you believe that, then I can’t—if you can’t articulate it to me, if there’s not a solid reason—you know, it’s like, I remember—I don’t know how spiritual you are. Have you heard of Neil deGrasse? He’s an astrophysicist.

SM: Right, right.

VC: One of my favorite minds on earth. He makes a very, very poignant statement. He’s been asked about God and spirituality, and he and I are probably in the same kind of camp, but he has a very good answer, an incredibly good answer, in part because of his education. He says, the statement he makes is, “God is an ever receding pocket of scientific discovery.” Think about that. Give it some thought. In the Middle Ages, what did they do when they wanted rain? They danced, they prayed, right? When they wanted, you know, a lot of praying, right?

SM: Right.

VC: When the sun wouldn’t shine, they would pray, when this and that, when someone was dying from something, you know, from malaria or something, they would pray. What’s happened since then? Science has cured a lot of those ills and God all of a sudden is no longer needed to cure all those ills, right?

SM: Yeah.

VC: So, you know, to me Jewishness is not a religious thing and so, as I mentioned to you, I told my wife that my desire was to raise a—you know, it wasn’t an issue with my first child because my first wife was Jewish, from a very Jewish family. Again, they’re not religious, but they’re very Jewish--the type of Jewish that I identify with. So Lorna, I told her all I wanted was to raise our children Jewish. She was not from a very Christian or spiritual family. She was very active in church choir and church Sunday school when she was being raised [2:00:00], but she’s not married to a religion either. As a matter of fact, if you talk to anyone who knows my wife today, they will unequivocally agree with the following statement: for a non-Jewish woman who never converted, she lives more Jewishly than most of the Jewish peers of her age. You will find that in agreement with many people, guarantee you. It’s an anomaly, almost. So that’s what we did, we had our boys circumcised. We had a baby naming for our daughter. We joined Fairmount Temple; we’ve been members--still members of Fairmount Temple even though we don’t participate in much. We had--our children went to a Jewish camp, Goldman Union Camp Institute, which is a part of Union of Reformed Judaism in Zanesville, Indiana—or

28

Zionsville, I’m sorry, which is a suburb of Indianapolis. They were bar and bat mitzvahed at Fairmont Temple. As a matter of fact, my children—well, here, I don’t have to, I’ll let them tell you. [Transcriber’s note: Here, Chernomorets can be heard engaging in background dialogue as he goes to bring his son into the interview.] So, if someone was to ask you how you identify yourself, spiritually and philosophically, what would your answer be?

VOVA CHERNOMORETS’ SON [NATHAN OR JOSH]: What do you mean?

VC: So, if someone was to come to you and say, within all of the options that society has to offer, “How would you identify yourself from a spiritual standpoint?” If you had to assign into a spiritual sect, what would it be?

SON: I’d probably say I’m reformed Jewish. I’m Jewish.

SM: Okay!

VC: Okay.

SON: Is that all?

VC: Well, that was the crux of it.

SM: I think you passed.

VC: So, bottom line is, they’ve been raised, they went through Hebrew school, they were bar mitzvahed, we celebrate Jewish holidays. For traditional—for sake of tradition we still have a Christmas tree. My oldest daughter--the Jewish Family News back in 2000-2001 did a thing on interfaith marriages and they profiled our family as one of the four that they did, and my oldest daughter was still in town and she said something that was very poignant in her part of the interview. She said, “We have a Christmas tree and we have an Easter brunch, but if you ask my siblings what Hanukkah is, they’ll tell you the story of Judah and Maccabees. If you ask them what Passover is, they’ll tell you about the Exodus and all of that. If you ask them what Christmas is, they’ll tell you it’s gifts. If you ask them what Easter is, they’ll tell you it’s a great brunch.” For the sake of my wife’s tradition, we do have a Christmas tree because she grew up with it and it’s a festive thing. I have to tell you, in the Soviet Union, everybody had a Christmas tree, because in the Soviet Union, a Christmas tree isn’t called a Christmas tree. It’s a tree for New Years, and Santa Claus is not Santa Claus. It’s Grandpa Frost who brings gifts. There is zero religion attached to it, so most of the Soviets grew up with a Christmas tree in their home in the winter time. So while we still have a Christmas tree, it’s not really for the purposes of celebrating Christ or being Christian. It’s for the festivity of it because it’s gift-giving season. We used to do Christmas morning; my wife and I would stay up all night before and we would wrap gifts and put them under the tree and the kids would

29 wake up and they couldn’t wait to come down and see what Santa left them under the tree, but that’s all it meant was gifts. From that [2:05:00] standpoint, my children identify with being Jewish. My daughter, my middle daughter--Rabbi Caruso from Fairmount Temple, she worked at the temple for a while helping with the school and everything, and at some point, during a conversation, Rabbi Caruso had told her that even though she’s been brought up Jewish, and even though she’s been bat mitzvahed, in certain sects of Judaism, she would still not be considered Jewish because her mother is not Jewish. My daughter at age 17 of her own accord decided to go through a conversion, so that there would never be a question of her Jewishness, and she did that. She went through the rituals of mikveh, and studies, and everything, and she went through a conversion process so that she could unequivocally claim to be Jewish. As far as Lorna and I, Lorna happens to work for Jewish Family Services now, for I think four years. She works in the ‘families at risk’ division. It is the job that she has loved more than any job she has ever had. She works with a lot of Jewish people, a lot of non-Jewish people. My understanding is the CEO of JFSA is a converted Jew. I know my wife’s boss, immediate report, is a converted Jew, but my wife lives as much of a Jewish life, if not more, than most of our peers do. We do holidays with friends, because we have no family; our friends are our family. We are not temple-going people, I don’t pray to God to get something done; I know it’s all on me. I don’t know, does that answer your question?

SM: Yeah, it does! Thank you very much. You have obviously got a lot to say, which is great.

VC: I don’t want to get granular on you to the nth degree.

SM: Well, so, why don’t we do this: we should, I think, conclude the interview for now. Give it some time and think about some of the things that we haven’t covered that you think you might want to talk about, and then we can reschedule.

VC: Okay. What I’d also like to do, and I’m just as pressed for time because I’ve got to make it downtown—

SM: Yeah, I should get back to the office at some point.

VC: What I’d like to do is, I brought this because I was going to show you, so, you know, I have a lot of stuff scanned. But we don’t have time, because if I get into it—

SM: Let’s, yeah.

VC: Why don’t we--you decide when you want to do this. If you want to take time to transcribe this, whatever, to evaluate it, show it to some people and get suggestions, whatever you want to do; your timetable.

30

SM: Okay.

VC: I’m more than happy to contribute, but what I’m saying is, next time we reconvene, why don’t we make time to go—I can show you what I have and you decide what you want, I’m more than happy to share it.

SM: Okay, sounds perfect.

VC: Like I said, there’s probably copies of passports, there’s copies of visas probably, there’s my school transcript from Russia, all these little things. Papers from HIAS referencing different things; they interviewed my parents that I wasn’t privy to at the time. There’s—you know, whatever. You put together a list of questions as well, and if I think of things I’ll try to make a note, and you tell me.

SM: Okay, that sounds great. Thank you so much and I’m concluding for now. [Transcriber’s note: Tape interrupted at 1:03:03 for tape 2, 2:08:58 overall.]

------

SM: Today is June 16th, 2015. This is Sean Martin and I am in the home of Vova Chernomorets. We’re continuing our conversation and I’ve just asked him about his university experiences, going to college, adjusting, making friends, and getting into your career and your work life.

VC: So you just covered quite a wide spectrum of—yeah. With regard to education, I attended HKU University and graduated magna cum laude.

SM: HKU?

VC: Yeah, Hard Knocks University.

SM: Okay—

VC: No, I’m just kidding! I don’t have any formal education.

SM: Okay.

VC: I went to—I told, did I tell you story about how I ascended from 7th to 8th grade?

SM: You mentioned that, yeah.

VC: There was no language, it was purely through [2:10:00] my math skills at the time and other issues that were driving forces, but bottom line is I went to Heights High. I actually did not graduate with my class. I was in the class of 1978 and during my senior

31 year, my parents were going through a tumultuous time, and my home was very tumultuous. So I wound up--I basically showed up to register my attendance at homeroom and never really went to any of the classes; bottom line is, I flunked out of high school, wound up getting my GED a couple of years later, and I never went to any higher education. As time went on, I’m pretty well—pretty much a self-taught individual, and that’s why I say I graduated HKU, because it really is hard knocks. I mean, everything I’ve learned I’ve learned by trial and error.

SM: So what did you do for work?

VC: So I--remember I told you about MarshAllan Manufacturing, the Bedol family that owned a factory on West 85th and Madison and they hired a lot of immigrants? My senior year in high school I actually got a job there working second shift, five to midnight or something, and that’s how I spent my senior year. I bought a car, I had car payments, and that was not forever obviously, but bottom line, is that was one of the jobs I had. I also worked at other places through high school. I started working really when we came here. The day after we came here, we were settled on Desota in the duplex and we came here on February 22nd of 1974 and my older brother who spoke almost no English but he took English in Russia, so he knew some words. It was snowing and we looked in the garage – and this is an environment that was foreign to us, living in a single home kind of a thing. We were used to a metropolitan, Manhattan-type of an area where we lived in an apartment complex all the time, and in Israel we lived in a--not in a suburban area. We look in the garage and there’s shovels and we look around and there’s driveways and the snow is piling up, and I’m noticing a neighbor struggling with their car getting in and out of the driveway, and then I’m noticing other people shoveling their driveway. I said to my brother, “Let’s take one of these shovels and go offer to shovel people’s driveways for two bucks.” So that was the first enterprising venture in America, the day after we got here. So then, after that I got a job within, I don’t know, a couple months. I got a job at a corner store on the corner of Desota and South Taylor Road. There was a little store owned by an Orthodox couple, and it was a very small grocery slash convenience store, and I got a job there working for a quarter an hour. As a matter of fact, the first time he paid me, I fell in love with the Hundred Thousand Dollar candy bar [transcriber’s note: Chernomorets probably means 100 Grand bars, a Nestle product], and I asked him, that instead of giving me money, could I have a box of those candy bars? So that was my first paycheck, was a box of 100 Grand bars, but anyway, I worked there for a quarter an hour. After a couple of weeks I said, “Hey, a quarter an hour is not enough pinball [2:15:00], I need more,” so he gave me two quarters an hour. Anyway, I worked there for a while. I was 13 years old, right? First of all, delivering newspapers was something I never even knew, a totally foreign concept to me. After that, I got a job--I had a slew of jobs through high school. I worked at All Makes Vacuum Cleaner Shop [transcriber’s note: Today there is an All Makes Vacuum on Lee Road], which was on Taylor Road by--down the street from Taylor Road Temple, in that old strip there. I remember Myron Burman was the proprietor and I was about fourteen when I went to work for him and I learned how to fix vacuum cleaners. I fixed vacuum

32 cleaners for a while, actually enjoyed that work. It taught me quite a bit about electrical stuff, about the way motors work, electric motors work. To this day, if we have a vacuum cleaner problem, there’s nothing that it can break that I cannot fix, just from that little experience. Then I worked at Severance Center at a couple places. The longest job I had there was at a shop called Diane’s Gift and Card Shop [transcriber’s note: Severance Center, or Severance Town Center as it was renamed in 2000, was once a booming commercial area for Cleveland. At its peak, 103 shops were included within the shopping center’s walls. There was a Diane’s Cards and Gifts Shop among the array of stores. Severance Town Center, increasingly the site of crime, went through a number of renovations and demolitions, and was ultimately foreclosed in 2015.] A guy named Cy Auerbach? [transcriber’s note: the spelling may be incorrect], I can’t remember his wife’s name, owned it. It was a gift and card shop, a nice little shop between Brooks Brothers and Woolworth’s [transcriber’s note: There is evidence of a Woolworth’s in Severance Town Center during the 1970s, but not a Walworth’s, and as of the 1965 map of Severance Center found online, Diane’s Cards and Gifts Shop was situated between Woolworth’s and Baker’s Shoes. There was a Burrows Brothers on the other side of Woolworth’s]. I worked there for over a year and I was the stock boy and I learned a lot about stock and inventory, managing inventory, and turning it, retail pricing structure. I’ve always been a person with an insatiable appetite for learning, anything. It can be nothing but I just enjoy learning. All of these different jobs taught me a little bit of something. I would never profess to be a guru of anything, but you know what, a little knowledge can go a long way. Then I worked at Diamond’s Restaurant as a dishwasher, which was downstairs at Severance. I worked at Carousel Snack Bar that opened up a little later at Severance. It was literally hot dogs and snack bar, but I was promoted to an assistant manager, which at that time it was a very glorifying position; it made you feel responsible. It taught me on delegating to other people for example, a little bit. I had so many different jobs--oh, when KFC, Kentucky Fried Chicken, opened on the corner of Taylor and Cedar Roads, I was one of the first employees there. I worked there for a while as a cook. I cooked chicken, made coleslaw, you know, whatever, the back room operations. So I had many jobs just going through high school, and then I worked at another factory, G&S Metals, they’re still around, I believe, on 79th and Union [transcriber’s note: G&S Metal Products Company does still operate out of a 79th Street facility]. I worked there driving a tow motor and doing inventory and operating a press punch. At MarshAllan Manufacturing, I operated a press punch most of the time. I had a slew of jobs, and then as my friends went away to college and I was out of high school, I was—you know, it’s funny, when I bought my first new car, it was a 1979 Cougar XR7 and I remember in July of ‘79 I bought this car at Kenny Lincoln-Mercury, which was a Lincoln-Mercury dealership on Chagrin Boulevard across from where Corky and Lenny’s is now. Where the new Indian restaurant is, that used to be a dealership, and it was a Saturn dealership [transcriber’s note: The Choolaah Indian BBQ is across Chagrin Boulevard from Corky and Lenny’s, with an LJI Collision Center right behind. The lot may have been the Kenny Lincoln-Mercury dealership Chernomorets speaks of, as there is record of a dealership under that name being registered in 1956 but currently in cancelled status]. A long time ago, anyway, it was called Kenny Lincoln-Mercury and I

33 bought my [2:20:00] car from there, and the powers-to-be were so impressed with the way I negotiated that they offered me a job, and they offered me a job for two reasons: one is because they liked the way I conducted myself within the transaction, but more importantly they saw an opportunity to reach the Russian market. And so, I was eighteen years old in ‘79, so at the time I was working for a place called Discount Tool and Supply, which was owned by a guy named Dennis Estren [transcriber’s note: There is a Production Tool Supply of Ohio on Brookpark Road, but there is no easily accessible record of a Discount Tool and Supply in Cleveland in 1979. Furthermore, Estren’s name may be misspelled]. He’s probably still around. He and his brother—his father started the business, he and his brother and his mother were running the business. I worked there for a year and a half-two years and I would ride around town, deliver tools, pickup tools, to different machine shops and whatnot. That job actually taught me the geography of the city of Cleveland like nothing else ever did because I literally spent so much time driving through the city, through industrial areas, east side, west side, all over the Flats [transcriber’s note: The Flats is an area of entertainment, industry, and residential neighborhoods in downtown Cleveland along the Cuyahoga River]. It’s like, today when we go somewhere in Cleveland my kids are amazed at how I get around without a GPS and I know shortcuts and this and that and the other. That job is what gave me the geographic knowledge of Cleveland. While working at Discount Tool and Supply I made the purchase of the car and they were recruiting me. So at age 18 I decided to give it a shot, not really knowing what the automobile sales industry is. Today it’s very different than it used to be, and it was right at a time when the Iran Hostage Crisis occurred [transcriber’s note: The Iran Hostage Crisis was an incident lasting from 1979 until 1981 in which 52 Americans were held hostage at the American Embassy in Tehran, Iran. Relations between Iran and the United States have since deteriorated]. People may not remember, but the Iran Hostage Crisis had an incredible impact on our economy and especially on the automobile sales industry. It just totally tanked. So as it tanks, I’m entering the field of automobile sales. So anyway, I worked there for a couple of months and they decided to put an ad in the Russian paper that was published out of New York. I think it was called Novoye Slovo, New Word, I think it was. I don’t know if it’s still around, even [transcriber’s note: Chernomorets is likely referring to Novoye Russkoye Slovo, the oldest Russian newspaper in the United States, which was established in 1910. It is no longer in circulation]. It was the only Russian language publication and so they put ads in there with my picture. “We have Russian speaking sales person.” Sure enough, some people came and the one thing that nobody really planned on is the lack of my Russian prowess because it’s one thing to communicate on a daily basis, it’s another thing to sort of do any professional work with your linguistic skills, and I have a less than fifth grade education in Russian and I’ve actually learned a lot of Russian in my adulthood, just by affiliating, talking to other Russian people. I did that for a couple of months there and then they would up getting-- they closed their doors because again, this Iran hostage thing had a huge impact on the automobile industry for some reason, and they weren’t the only ones. Quite a few dealerships didn’t make it. So I went to work with their competitor and their uncle, Hal Artz Lincoln Mercury in Mayfield Heights and I was there for about a month and a half,

34 and I really just hated the business. I hated the concept of the type of sales that it represented. Just the way the industry conducted itself on a sales level. And so while at Hal Artz, I met a guy who worked at Hal Artz and who was recruited into the life insurance sales industry. No, I’m sorry, I met him while I was shopping for my car, but stayed in touch with him. By the time I went to work for Hal Artz, he [2:25:00] was already working for an insurance company. He got recruited into the insurance sales business. So he started recruiting me, and between the fact that I hated the automobile sales industry and the fact that they offered me $175 dollars a week to start, for the first, I don’t know, three months and then I would be on commission, I said, “Okay, why not.” I entered the insurance sales business in June of 1980. I worked for a small company out of Baltimore, Maryland called Monumental Life [transcriber’s note: Monumental Life Insurance Company does still exist in Baltimore, although it is changing its name to Transamerica Premier Life Insurance Company]. They had what was known as an old debit operation where a lot of the accounts needed to be visited and premiums needed to be collected because people just didn’t send them in. I did very well with them. I was the youngest person to make the President’s Conference, which is a sales achievement recognition thing. I was the youngest person to be promoted to what’s called a staff manager, where you have a staff of about eight people, sales people that report to you and you manage their activity. After a couple of years, through that, I was lucky that the manager of the office, the guy that recruited me, was a true professional sales guy. He was not a—you know. It was such a far cry from auto sales or any other sales. This was truly a professional concept of finding a person with a need, defining the need, and finding a viable solution to fulfill that need. What you would think a good sales practice to be. Through that he got me involved in the industry-based associations and educational programs, so I met a lot of people from the industry within the area, and through that process I discovered over a couple of years, I was working for a very small company with very limited offerings, and the insurance business had a lot more to offer. I wound up getting a job with the behemoth of the industry, Prudential Life Insurance Company at the time, so I switched to Prudential. In January of 1983 I started with Prudential, and through Prudential I expanded my insurance base horizons from life and health to property and casualty as well. Anyway, I wound up spending the entire decade of ‘80s in the insurance sales arena, and through the ‘80s, I wound up starting my own insurance agency, if you will, whereby I would broker other companies’ products in addition to selling the company, where I worked, their product. This is interesting because the transition into technology really began very early in the ‘80s for me. I was always--technology was always a hobby of mine, and I was lucky enough that at Heights High there was a computer system, a very rudimentary computer system, but there was a class offered, and I took the class and I fell in love with it, and we had a teletype, what was known as a teletype machine. In the early ‘80s when the personal computing arena was just, literally, the foundation was being laid in the late ‘70s-early ‘80s, I wound up getting into it by buying one of the first personal computers, if you will, in, like, ‘81 or so, ’81-’82. Anyway, and through the ‘80s I was tinkering with computers while engaged in insurance sales. By the end of the decade, by ‘90, I found myself spending more time with my avocation than with my vocation. I was

35 one of [2:30:00] those guys that literally would stay up all night tinkering and coding and then go to work in the morning. In the early ‘90s, in 1990-’91—by the way, my wife and I met through the insurance industry. She was transferred here with the company MetLife from the Des Moines, Iowa area, and I went to work for MetLife in, I want to say, March of ’89, and that’s how we met. But then by ’90-‘91, I think, I had met a couple of guys, Russian guys, that started a computer business. They would buy parts on the west coast, they would make computers, sell them, they would go to different shows, flea market-like shows. Anyway, I met them because they needed temporary insurance, so I sold them insurance, but because there was an interest, we stayed friends and whatnot and I saw an opportunity. I talked to them about it, about growing their business, and I was already pretty much a seasoned veteran of the insurance industry and I had renewals coming in, so I was in a position that I could kind of break away from it and get into a different vocational field. So that’s what I did, I started with them, I connected with them, and we wound up growing that business quite a bit over a period of a couple of years.

SM: What was that business?

VC: It was called Micro Xperts. When I started with them they had one store; they had just bought out a guy on the west side with a small store. I was instrumental not only in helping them grow the retail side of it, because they were really, they were heavily focused on these flea market-type shows that they would go to on weekends. The opportunity I saw is, this is a growing field, we can develop a wholesale business, we can develop a retail business. So that’s kind of where I focused and I helped out with. I was there for a couple of years and we went through tremendous growth, opened a bunch of locations, and then there was a falling out. We had a handshake deal—bottom line is, there was a falling out, so we parted ways and then I was going to open my own business of the same kind, but I was recruited by a huge mass-marketing firm out of Canton. They did a lot of mail-order marketing kind of a thing, where the owner actually had a penchant for technology and he wanted to put together a technology division selling and marketing computers to neophytes. He recruited me, made a very attractive offer, and I went to work for him and all along I knew it was going to be a temporary thing. I helped him start, I was one of the directors that helped him start a division that did just that; we put together a computer and software for the neophyte market; for someone who has never turned on a computer, literally plug it in, turn it on and the software would help you get things done—very rudimentary stuff. I was there for about a ten-month period and that project ended and then in February of ’94 I started my own computer company called CompuWorld. The focus of CompuWorld was to operate in the mail-order arena; this was before Internet commerce. There was a lot of Russian people that got into this business. We were all operating within this mail-order model where we would put ads into national magazines, one in particular. The phones would ring, and we would make sales, we would fill orders [2:35:00]. There was plenty of business for everybody around until 1997, Thanksgiving of ’97 when the Asian financial crisis occurred and really made a huge adjustment in the computer industry. Most of us

36 did not survive that. I hung around until—I mean, CompuWorld was, we were doing great, we grew. I went from a 3400 square foot facility that I started out in to building a warehousing and distribution facility and assembly line in an 18500 square foot facility just down the street. After the market adjustment, so to say, the business changed tremendously and we lasted until—through ‘99 maybe and then I was—I started this current business, NetWiz, in 2002. In February of 2002 I incorporated it, and what NetWiz does is provide information technology support to the small business community. Information technology today basically encompasses everything from a computer, to networking, to even telephoning anymore because they are so converged together. Telephony was a separate industry; anymore, telephony rides on top of Internet protocol, on top of data. That’s what NetWiz does, so that’s kind of my vocational history.

SM: It’s based here in Solon?

VC: I work out of my home.

SM: That’s great. So 2002, so you have been doing that about almost thirteen years?

VC: Fourteen years. It started out very slow. There were some caveats that prevented me from growing. I actually, it’s funny because beginning of this year, I kind of made a decision to focus on growing this business.

SM: Your plan is just to continue this business for the future?

VC: Well, I’m 54 years old. This is what I know. This is what I’m good at.

SM: Okay, that’s great!

VC: Unless there’s another opportunity that arises that is a paradigm of some sort. But you never know, there are things that are happening all over the place that shift paradigms, so who knows.

SM: Thank you for explaining all of that; your career history there. I have one other question for you and then if you could add anything else you’d like and then I’d like to see whatever documents you have, too. You mentioned in passing when we spoke last, I think you mentioned the Schvitz here in Cleveland, going to the Schvitz.

VC: Yes, right.

SM: If you could say more about that and especially if you could say something about the connection of the Russian, the former Soviet Jews who came and their connection to the Schvitz, if there is one.

37

VC: The owners of the Schvitz are going to hate me for talking about it because it is such a gem in Cleveland. Having been to schvitzes in other places, I can tell you that we are very fortunate to have what we have. First time was—well, let me back up. At this point in my life I go to the Schvitz several times a season. The season is from early October to late April. It’s traditionally an eastern European type of a thing. Most Americans, when you explain it to them, they have a hard time conceptualizing it. It’s a [2:40:00] very comradery-based setting where—you know, it’s a sauna. ‘Schvitz’ is a Yiddish word for sweat. It’s literally a dry sauna. There’s a cold pool and they have a kitchen and a dining room, and they have a room with a lounge, if you will, with cots and masseurs, you can get a massage.

SM: This is around 116th and Kinsman?

VC: No comment. It’s a hidden gem. If you don’t know where it is, you will never find it. You have to have someone reliable telling you where it is.

SM: Okay.

VC: It’s off the radar for a good reason. I don’t mean to imply there’s anything illicit going on, because there’s not. The Schvitz is a great place for guys to just go hang, meet, have a steak, to just have comradery. It’s not a gay thing, it’s not. There’s no illicit activity going on, it’s just—it’s no different from some guys having a poker game in a basement except they’re eating steak and sitting in a sauna, shooting the breeze, kind of a thing. One of the greatest things I will tell you about the Schvitz is, to me, the Schvitz played a very important sentimental role in—a rite of passage, if you will. I have two eighteen year old boys. They just turned eighteen last week. I have a great relationship with them and always have. We’ve always done a lot of father/son kind of things. The Schvitz is one of the greatest stories because, in my life, I remember my dad taking me to the Schvitz in Kiev, and I remember in Kiev the big thing at the Schvitz was crab legs, or not necessarily crab legs, what’s the other creature with—that you eat with your hands? Well, crabs, I mean it was some sort of crabs. It was a lot of crab shell breaking and eating.

SM: Seafood.

VC: Well, specifically crab type of stuff. My father was not exactly a very good family guy. He didn’t spend much time with the family, but one of the fondest memories I do have is him taking me to the Schvitz. There was beer, there was the crabs, there was a lot of herring. I remember dried seafood products and sausage and stuff. It was a fun time. I took my boys to the Schvitz first time when they were about, I want to say, nine- ten years old. I’ll never forget, a friend of mine and I took our boys and his boys, the same age, and on the way down there, I’m trying to explain to my boys in the car where we’re going. They never hesitated to new experiences with me because everything we’ve ever done has been a lot of fun. We’ve done road trips to Chicago, to New York or

38 the Catskills, just the boys, to Boston. We’ve always had a great time and they know we’ll have a great time. They weren’t hesitant in going, but I was trying to explain to them where we’re going, and as I am explaining to them about being naked in a sauna and sitting around with a towel or a sheet wrapped around your body in the dining room, they’re like, “Dad, where are you taking us?” All of a sudden, they got these trepidations. Well we went, we met some friends with other kids and on the way home, they are totally relaxed in the van and they’re like, “Dad, this was the greatest night of our lives [2:45:00].”

SM: That’s a great story.

VC: So ever since then, I make it a point to take them to The Schvitz at least twice a season, once in the fall, once in the spring, because it’s not a cheap endeavor, either. I myself go more than that because I’m meeting my friends and getting together. The point I’m trying to make is, even to this day, if I go without them, they get mad at me.

SM: So is the Schvitz alive and well? Are people going?

VC: Yes. As a matter of fact, it has actually grown, and it’s grown because of Eastern European immigration in general. If you recall, in the ‘90s there was a big wave of the former Yugoslavian-based population. So there’s an element of it on the west side of Cleveland. You can’t keep the Schvitz a complete secret. People are people, they talk and anybody with an eastern European origin is going to want to see what it is and chances are they are going to want to come back. Yes, it’s alive and well. As a matter of fact, somedays it’s impossible, there are just too many people there. But the Schvitz is a definite Old World Eastern European tradition, which to this day is all over Europe and we are very fortunate to have it here.

SM: I wanted to ask about it because you had mentioned it and it’s something that I think people are interested in. Anything else you would like to add that we have talked about in categories of topics or anything?

VC: I thought you made a note. We talked about a couple of things after we stopped when you were here last and I thought there was a couple of things that we thought of that you made a note about us touching on when you came back.

SM: For me, that was the main category. Career experiences after you got out of school. You talked a lot about your family. I think that really covers the main things. Is there anything else you would like to—well, why don’t you—there are some kind of general questions to kind of follow up with I guess. What would you say have been your—let me get the exact wording--would have been the best aspects of your life as an immigrant to Northeast Ohio and what were the most difficult adjustments?

39

VC: The most difficult adjustments to this day is my name, obviously. People, the general population, especially in America, sees a foreign name and almost is scared by it, even though if you break my name down, it is not a difficult name. There is a vowel for every syllable, so if you know the alphabet all you have to do is read. Especially my first name, and by first name I mean my nickname. My nickname is four letters long, two vowels and two syllables. People look at it and they’re like, “Uh, how do you pronounce this?” And I get flabbergasted, it’s like, seriously? You can’t read four letters? How many different ways can you possibly pronounce V-O-V-A, right? But you would be amazed. First of all, people stick an L in the middle of my name. My name has been the butt of jokes--the one Seinfeld episode with, you know, Mulva [transcriber’s note: In the Seinfeld episode “The Junior Mint,” Jerry attempts to recall the name of the woman he is seeing by guessing her name from rhyming it with different female anatomical parts]. It is just right on there. But my last name is even more challenging. My last name is twelve letters long but phonetically, there’s a vowel for every syllable. So again, all you have to do is read [2:50:00]. There’s two instances in my last name where two letters make up a sound: the beginning and the end. All you have to do is read. So that has been probably the most challenging thing, but it’s something you learn to live with and it is what it is. In my kids’ case, none of their peers have an issue with it. Absolutely none because they all grew up with it and they’ve known it from the time they can remember, so to them it’s all second nature. There’s been all kinds of variations on my last name with my kids. With adults, it’s mind boggling. People look at it and they’re like, “Woah, how do you say this?” You know, “What is this?” I’ve gotten to the point where I’m just so tired of it, I just say, “You know what, just read it. It sounds just like it’s spelled.” As much as they try to not read it, sometimes I just get so sick of it I force them to: “Just read it, go ahead. Try it.” And they wind up reading it, it’s no big deal. Other than that, the most challenging part was when I was a kid. Teenagers are not the most friendly facet of a society. They can be cruel, and they can be—sensitivity is not something that they are accustomed to. Political correctness is not something that they’ve learned yet. As a teenager, the toughest part was just making friends because of lack of linguistic skills. Teenagers are not as, what’s the word I’m looking for, as tolerant and diverse as adults are. I spent a lot of time doing my own thing. One of the reasons why I got into electronics and technology is because of lack of friends and I found solace in RadioShack because they used to sell these kits. Places like RadioShack and, what was the other place? Heath--remember Heath stores? They were electronics hobby stores. They haven’t been around forever, but they used to sell kits, you know, you would buy a kit of components with instructions and you would assemble it. To me, that was--I was interested in that. So for me to spend Friday evening soldering together something that became a working element out of a bunch of little diodes and components and transistors, it was enjoyable--but things of that nature. Later on, actually, in my adult life, people are very surprised, to this day I get an enormous amount of comments regarding my lack of accent for a foreigner. So people get pleasantly surprised, I’d like to hope. Again, my name is the biggest thing because it’s foreign sounding and until people meet me or my family for that matter, because my wife has been dealing with it as well for the last 22 years. We just celebrated our 22nd anniversary and she’s been living with

40 the name as well. In the Solon community, my wife is very active in the schools and we have an enormous circle of friends and a very varied circle of friends. So we are very social people. Our friends are our family because we literally have no family here. My parents are gone; my one brother that was here passed away five years ago. I have one brother in LA and some cousins in Boston and Australia and that’s the extent of my family. My wife has some family in Iowa, but our friends here are our family.

SM: How would you identify yourself today--as Jewish, American, Russian?

VC: That’s a very interesting question. As I mentioned to you before, growing up in Russia, being a Jew, which I knew I was a Jew, I had no idea what it meant [2:55:00]; in retrospect it was a label, no different than if I was wearing a yellow triangle, like the Nazis made the Jews wear. But in Russia, being a Jew, at least in the element of in my world, where we lived, and in our communities, the immediate surrounding community, it meant nothing more than a label. I know that there were other Jewish people because I remember in our apartment my parents having discussions. The Jewishness coming up in conversation meant nothing to me as a kid. But for the most part--I think I told you the story of how there were some hoodlums that would sit around and wait for me on the way out of school and all the physical altercations that took place almost on a daily basis and other scenarios. I think I told you the story about my dad when a kid pushed me into rose bushes and my dad came to my defense and then a bunch of dads jumped on him. It was like, the Jew is—you know. But even after leaving Russia, even after going through Israel, and I think I mentioned to you how I went from the atheist element to the holiest element where riding my bike across the street from an Orthodox shul. The worshippers would throw stones at me because I’m invading their space, so to say. I had no idea what any of that meant. Again, I went from an atheist environment where all religion was forbidden, and I knew I was a Jew but I had no idea what it meant, to an environment in Israel where you have the melting pot of Jews and a lot of them can’t get along with the others. From there, we come here and, really, I didn’t start learning about Judaism until more of my adulthood, but for some reason, I’ve always identified myself as being Jewish. I didn’t really know why. I’ve come to, the more I’ve learned about Judaism the more I appreciate it and, I think I mentioned to you before, to me, Judaism is not a spiritual thing. I’m not a spiritual person, I’m not a religious person, never have been. At this point in my life, I can’t see myself going down that road, but Jewish to me has always been more of a teaching, a wisdom, a way of life--to love your children, to love your family, to do right by the world, by your neighbor. I guess, in a sense, I hate to make it a political thing but if you look at what’s going on today in the extreme Muslim world, and the ISIS and all the atrocities they’re doing, and if you look at even the not-so-extreme parts of it where they’re educating children to be ‘martyrs’ as they call, and where they’re teaching little kids to hate Jews just because they’re Jews, and to look forward to war and whatnot. Judaism doesn’t do that. To me, Judaism teaches how to love your children, how to take care of your family, how to take care of your community, and how to improve the world we live in, which is so evident by the sciences. One only needs to look at the names of accomplishments in the sciences to

41 see the impact Judaism has had, and it’s not because Jews are necessarily that much smarter than any other people. It, I think, has more to do with the teachings and ultimate ambition of what the Jewish theology, I guess, professes. So I’ve always identified myself with being Jewish, and I don’t know if I mentioned this to you but when my wife and I—I did mention my wife isn’t Jewish, right? [3:00:00] She grew up in a—kind of a—I guess a—not a Catholic, not necessarily a Christian environment, but she was involved in her church, maybe it was Protestant of some sort. You know what, I don’t even want to know, you need to ask her, but she was involved in the church in her community. She taught Sunday school, she was involved in Christmas plays and whatnot, Easter plays, so the one thing, when we got serious and we were talking about a life together and a family, I never asked her to convert. I simply let her know that my wishes were to raise our children in the Jewish traditions. Turns out, she embraced it to a greater degree than I did. She was the driving force between us joining a temple.

SM: Which temple was that?

VC: Fairmount. We’ve been members at Fairmount ever since the kids were little. We started them with the schooling process. My kids have been bar and bat mitzvahed. The camp that they attended through their childhood and have loved—my daughter is there right now working as a staff, is the Goldman Union Camp Institute, which is a camp from the Union of Reformed Judaism Movement, and if you ask them, they will tell you they’re Jewish. I think I told you about my daughter taking it upon herself at age 17—

SM: You did.

VC: --to convert so that her Jewishness would not be questioned in some aspects of Jewish society. So I’ve always identified myself as being Jewish. Again, not for religious reasons, not for spiritual reasons, but just because I’ve always—you know, the more I learned about it, the more I appreciate the teachings of Judaism.

SM: Well, thanks! I think we should conclude the formal part of the interview. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we look at—?

VC: Well, so, I’m not sure. Is there anything?

SM: No, I think we’ve covered a great deal here. I really appreciate your candor.

VC: I mean, is there anything—my boys happen to be home if you think there’s anything that they can contribute?

SM: No, I think we’re good!

VC: Okay.

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SM: I will—I think what will happen now is it will take us some time, but we will transcribe the interview and you will have a chance to look at it, so if you think there are things you would like to add later, we can certainly be in touch, but thank you very much! I very much appreciate your talking so much and so openly about everything. It’s great! It really is. Thank you.

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