The elder of Glukhov community Leya-Haya Pismennaya has become 92. This woman has seen much in her life: a pogrom of Jews in 1918, massacre and robberies by the Denikin "wild division" in 1919. She remembers how Iona Yakir together with Glukhov partisans and Red Guard soldiers was driving away this gang, how her father Aaron-Nison Samuilovich, risking his neck, buried 130 victims of pogroms after a Jewish ritual. She was telling us about collectivization, industrialization, NEP in the Glukhov district, about her father's working cantor and shames at the synagogue. She studied at a Jewish school, worked on a Jewish kolkhoz.
Of particular interest was her story about culture and sport in Glukhov in pre-war years.
In 1926-1928 her brother Samuil played in a town football team "Shturm" which used to beat teams from Chernigov, Poltava, Odessa, Kharkov.
Leya-Haya Pismennaya warmly recalls a Jewish theatre many of her friends played at.
Then the war came, evacuation, death of her beloved brother on the front-line, mother's and father's death and again evacuation... She graduated from a higher economic school in Konotop and worked as an accountant for over 40 years. She is a very optimistic person willing peace come to Israel and to the whole world. She is interested in politics. We have recently congratulated her with the holiday of Shavuot. At the end of our visit she expressed a deep gratitude to us, to Kharkov "Joint" and Sumy "Hessed Haim" and wished everybody peace, health and happiness. |