DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Khonya Epshtein. Full, unedited interview, 2010 ID NY060.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4j847 ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN TABLE OF CONTENTS ITEM TRANSCRIPT ENGLISH TRANSLATION 2 CITATION & RIGHTS 17 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 1/17 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Khonya Epshtein. Full, unedited interview, 2010 ID NY060.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4j847 ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN TRANSCRIPT ENGLISH TRANSLATION —Today is March 16, 2010. We are in Brooklyn, meeting a former ghetto inmate and participant of the Great Patriotic War. Please introduce yourself and tell us about your life before the war. What sort of family were you raised in? What did you do during the war? My name is Khonya Epshtein. My father’s name was Borukh and my mother’s name was Malka. I was born in the town of Shepelevichi [Shapyalevichy], Mogilev [Mahilyow] Oblast, Belarus. The town was on the northern outskirts of the Mogilev Oblast. Beyond the town were dense forests that stretched all the way to the Berezina River. You could walk all the way to the Berezina and then reach Minsk if you wanted to. The forests were rich and dense. The forests had many lakes that had probably been formed during the Ice Age. My childhood was spent surrounded by Belarusian nature: mushroom, berries, and swimming in lakes. The gorgeous Aslik River passed through my town and there was a wonderful beach on its bank. Near the beach there was a two-story windmill. There was a lot of fish in the river, so fishing also occupied a very important place in my life. I remember one time my father and I caught a huge catfish, but we could not eat it because my father kept kosher and could not eat a fish without scales. We had to give it to the town priest, who gratefully accepted the gift. Belarusian families lived next to the Jewish families in our village. We got along splendidly, among the children it made no difference whether you were Jewish or Belarusian. Many cottagers from Leningrad, Moscow, Minsk, and Mogilev came during the summer, lured by the wondrous nature all around us. My father had many Belarusian friends. During the evenings we often had many people over to play cards and chat around a table. They took over our usual study place and we would have to go to a different part of our enormous house in order to do our homework. There was a large school in our town. At first it was a seven-year school, but it was later expanded to include high school. We had great teachers, all of whom had higher education. Our Russian language and literature teacher was Evgeniya Petrovna Skalina, math was taught by Mariya Vasilevna Dividenko, the principal was Andrey Makarovich Lipetsky, and the chief administrator was Afansy Fyodorovich Lugovtsov. My first teacher was Elena Konstantinovna Vidyakova. From my elementary school teachers, I best remember Mariya Vikentiyevna Kuzmenkova. She was my teacher through fourth grade. Thanks to her I was a great student in fifth grade. I received certificates of merit every year. I loved the forest. I would go and pick baskets of mushrooms before school. When I was not gathering mushrooms . Not far from our home there was a large fire observation tower, and I went there almost every day. I climbed to the highest step. I also loved to swim and dive. I would dive from the roof of the windmill that was on the bank of our river. I often had to cross the river using a plank if the water was too deep. This came in handy later when I was a partisan and had to cross the river using a plank, but this time carrying my submachine gun, ammo clips, grenades, and a rucksack. What else can I tell you . 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 2/17 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Khonya Epshtein. Full, unedited interview, 2010 ID NY060.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4j847 ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN —What language did the children speak to each other? Most children spoke Belarusian, but those families who were close to us spoke Russian. In Russian there is the conjunction “kogda” [when], while in Belarusian it is “koli.” I remember that the father of Misha Bordashev, one of my friends, would chastise and ridicule him for using the Belarusian word. Because of that Misha tried to speak Russian, even though there was a great teacher of Belarusian at our school, Mariya Fyodorovna Sulimova. —“Koli” also exists in some Russian expressions. Yes, well . he was not allowed to speak Belarusian. His father served in the army, knew Russian well, and forced his children to speak it. —Did people speak Yiddish? We only spoke Yiddish at home. Because my parents spoke it at home we also knew it very well. There were about forty Jewish families in our town. There was an entirely Jewish street. It was paved with battens and thus was a little higher than the other streets. The houses were in better shape than those on non- Jewish streets. The homes were beautifully built and there were many new houses there. The Jews were mostly craftsmen. Many were blacksmiths, cobblers, glaziers, and tailors. There were also merchants, but in smaller numbers. Since we lived in a heavily wooded district, there were several tar factories nearby. They were built on clearings not far from the riverbank. Jews normally worked there as store clerks. My grandfather Simon Soloveychik, who lived 12 kilometers away in the town of Esmony, worked at one such factory. Our family was enormous. My father not only had two brothers, but two sisters as well. His older brother and middle sister had immigrated to America before 1914. My father was born in 1890 and was drafted into the army in 1910 and served in Volsk, Saratov Province. In 1914, when the First Imperialist War, as it was called then, began, he fought at the front near Lviv. The tsar even awarded my father with St. George’s Cross for the capture of Lviv. He only had the cross though, he was not included into the order. After that he was taken prisoner and held until 1920. His mother died when he was in captivity. After he got back, he got married, in 1921. There were many people in our town who were not supportive of the new government and violent crime was common. Since Jewish families tended to be richer, the bandits often targeted them. Sometimes after looting a house they would light it on fire with the occupants still inside. My father’s first wife, Roza, saw that a nearby house was on fire and tried to wake my father up, but he would not get up. From the shock she fell ill with tuberculosis and passed away two years later. My father was left alone with his young daughter, Rakhil. He had to figure out what to do next and who would raise her. My father turned to his wife’s father's family. There were five more daughters and one more son in that 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 3/17 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Khonya Epshtein. Full, unedited interview, 2010 ID NY060.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4j847 ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN family. At a family council they decided to place the responsibility on the next oldest, my mother, who lived in Minsk and evidently already had a suitor. My father did not know her. They met for the first time when she came here. She had been friends with her oldest sister, my father’s wife, and she was convinced to come back home despite having a suitor in Minsk. She had no choice but to marry my father. I must say that a strong family was created. My mother and father loved each other and my sister was very lucky because she was raised by her aunt. I also had an older brother named Samuil, born in 1924, who was very smart, handsome, and sociable. All the boys from our town wanted to be friends with him. I was born in 1928, followed by my younger brother Simon in 1930. Because her mother had fallen ill with tuberculosis . my sister had eye problems. They say it is related to tuberculosis. She was shortsighted and everyone pitied her. She was a very beautiful and interesting girl. This was our life before the war. My father was the chairman of a small cobbler workshop. He employed five craftsmen and was himself a good cobbler. After the war, when I ran into people from my hometown in Mogilev, they would turn to my wife, Olga, and ask: “Do you know who his parents were?” One former peasant from a village near ours said, “When I grew up and had to join the army, my father took me to his grandfather and asked him to make some boots for me. Your grandfather said that it was not a problem. My father said that he did not have enough money to pay him. Your grandfather asked how much we had, and we said three rubles. He said that that was enough and made me a pair of boots that lasted me until I was issued new ones in the army.” Later he was sent to the front and was promoted to the rank of major. He knew my parents and my grandfather well. My time at school was quite lively.