OUR Family. First Memories.
Chldhood. Up to 1924.

A lyrical digression – before I start my notes 7 Sept. 1971

Who am I writing these notes for? For my daughters? For the grandchildren? Will they be interested in all these memories of mine? They take up a lot of space in my brain and if I do write it all down I will not have to 'try and save it' anymore: the pictures of the past, the conversations, the different events. All of it will be put down in writing and if I want to go back to my memories in detail I will be able to read them. And who knows, maybe my girls and my grandchildren will want to read these notes. So, let them be written! It will take a long time to write them all down, but as our Papa used to say: "Only the man who starts on his road gets to see its end. " That's right. So, Zyaka writes books and I shall write "reminiscences".

Another lyrical digression 23 Sept. 1971

Today is my birthday, I am 57. I am very glad that this morning I arranged with 'Frolly' to play tennis. When I told him that it was my birthday, he made a wish that I should be able to play tennis for many, many years to come, "because it will mean that you are well and healthy and then everything else will be fine too". Even though this is not absolutely correct, but it does have a rational principle behind it.

This picture was taken when I was 56. These notes are being written down in September 1971, i. e. I am now 57. I am still affixing the picture right here as this was the time when I decided to tell everything I remembered. One day I thought that a man lives in the memories of two generations (later on I read something similar too). Only one generation remembers my Mother and Father. Iren was nearly 4 years old when my Father remained in Nazi-occupied territory and she did not remember her "Grandpa without hair". Tusya and Iren will remember me and the grandchildren's memories of me will depend on how long I shall live. If I will not live long they will not, I suppose, remember anything.

Are these notes necessary? I don’t know. One day Tusya asked me: "Could you write up everything about all those Eiduses and about yourself?" Will I be able to do that? I don't want to use a certain style for these notes. I will just try to remember as much as possible without worrying about my style or handwriting. Maybe I shall even change the chronology if I find it easier to write that way.

Will these notes survive? I don't know. If it were not for the war I would have definitely kept my Mother's notebooks. At least Frieda in Moscow once received some family photographs and they can now be used. Let them be kept not in photo albums but within these notes.

When I was a child I heard many times that I was born "on the road". My parents were refugees: at the beginning of World War I our family temporarily 'settled down' in Vitebsk, in Belorussia, in order to wait for me to be born. I was called Lyuba. I did not know for a long time why they gave me that name. When as a child I asked about my Mother said: "Your name is Lyubov ('lyubov' in Russian means love), your Father's love and my love. " I thought for a long time that that was the explanation given, many years later I learned that the real reason was a different one. By then I already knew that my Mother was my Father's second wife. His first wife died from tuberculosis and at that time he was left with two small children: one was two years' old and the other – three. His wife's name was Liebchen which mean 'love' or 'the loved one'. Father had an antique pocket watch on the back of which there was a gold inscription on the grey background that said "Liebchen". Maybe it was her signature. Somehow I learned that the watch was a gift received from his first wife. By then I understood, without asking, why I was named Lyuba. They did not speak to the children about the past at home and I suppose I had forgotten quite a lot too. I do remember that I perceived the history of my name as being a secret. I found the picture of my older brother's and sister's mother among the family photographs. We did not have a family album, the pictures were kept in a large bundle (almost all of them were really old and each picture was glued on to a piece of cardboard). I don't remember who told me that this was Liebchen's picture. It was a picture of a beautiful young woman in a long white gown. Her hair were swept back, she had rather closely set eyes and a very thin waist. I had often looked at that picture and thought that my sister Tusya looked like her mother even though Tusya had dark hair and brown eyes while her mother, according to the picture, had much lighter hair and grey eyes.

The truth is that for quite a long time, until I was nine, I did not know that Tusya and Benno had a different mother.

My parents with two children 'escaped' from Libau. I was told once that I had a wet nurse, a rather fat woman. Later on they told rather mockingly that she used to try to get warm by sitting with her back to the fireplace. They also made fun of me because I allegedly made it a habit to urinate into the galoshes. I must have been very little then. I started to walk at the age of 9 months (according to what I remember from childhood stories) and I also started to talk at an early age. I also heard when I was very small that my parents wanted a boy and I was born instead. I remembered that for many years. When I was about 8 or 9 and even later I thought about it a lot, especially when I thought that my parents loved me much less then they loved Zyama who was born nine months after me. Zyama was born on the 23rd of June 1916. By that time we had already been living in Vologda, in Russia.

Of course, I don't remember anything about Vologda, but I do know a few things because of what the parents used to tell. This picture, for example, was taken in Vologda. I know quite a lot about it. Here I am photographed with Aunt Tsilya. She was not yet married to Lazar but she used to come to our house quite often. They used to tell that she loved me very much then. She took me to the photographer when Mother was in maternity hospital ('in hospital' as it was called then) to give birth to Zyama. The doll in the picture was also called Zyama, after my little brother. I had my hair very nicely combed in that picture and I was told that it was one of the rare cases when I had allowed someone to comb my hair properly. I usually went around with my hair in a mess as I had very thick and wavy hair, it was quite painful to have my hair combed. This is a 'traditional' photo: small children were often photographed this way. I was probably about a year and a half or two years' old. I also remember another story that had to do with Vologda: on a very cold day, almost in winter, I went outside 'practically naked' (at the time I understood it literally), walked away somewhere and after searching for me for hours they found me "near the water-pump'. I had very vivid pictures in my mind of what had happened. As to Zyama's birth I had always insisted that I remembered everything very well: I was taken to the hospital to see Mother, she had 'white hair' and next to her was a little baby boy who kept kicking his little feet. Even now, as I write this, I see this scene which I 'saw' when I was little. Someone once guessed that Mother must have been lying in bed wearing a white bonnet of some kind and that was why I thought that she had 'white hair'. In any case, that was how I remembered her. Why the little boy kept kicking his feet? No-one offered me any explanation for that, but this was the mental picture I had in connection with Zyama's birth. My memory obviously absorbed one memorable scene, stories about babies and my impressions of what I saw.

I know very little about my father. He was originally from the town of Dvinsk (Daugavpils in Latvian) and then he moved to Libau (Liepaja in Latvian). He was not very tall, but, as I heard years later from relatives: "he was the handsomest of the Eidus brothers". He had wavy black hair, brown eyes and a fine face. Mother told me that Father had graduated from high-school. I remembered him working as a 'commercial agent'; he was always away travelling in connection with some firm's affairs. The picture here is the only picture of him I have. I don't know how old he was when it was taken. He looks the same in other pictures, taken with Tusia and Benno, so he must have been about 23-25. He married young and he soon became a widower, having remained alone with two small children.

Father did not "potter about" us, did not play with us and was always very reserved and serious. In the company of grownups he often told jokes and funny stories, he was a man with a sense of humor. His name was Lyova, Lev Borisovich.

Father had several brothers and sisters. He especially loved his eldest brother Aron. One of Aron's hands had 'little apples': instead of a hand with fingers he had a wrist wich ended with soft round little balls. I had only met him when I was about seven and a half, when we came back to Latvia. I have only seen photographs of Father's sister Berta. As a child I heard that she had been run over by a car. This is all I know about her. Another brother, Maxi, was a doctor. He died, I think, in 1934 somewhere in Russia. He was sent to some village during a typhoid epidemic and got infected. He left a widow, named Etta, and two boys, Danya and Osya. Etta and Danya visited Latvia when I was about eight and Danya was about one years' old. Osya suddenly appeared in 1950, when he came to visit us on his way to a new job in Kuibyshev. He got married there and the couple had two children. He died soon afterwards, he drowned… I really got to know Etta and Danya in 1964, when I first came to Leningrad where they lived.

Father's other sister Frieda had always lived in Moscow. I usually stayed with her when I visited Moscow on business. I first met her when I came to Moscow for the first time in 1941, two weeks before the war started.

N. B. 21 Oct. 1972. Osya's daughter came to Riga in the beginning of October. Her name is Svetlana and she recently got married. She and her husband Fima Shteingart spent a lovely evening with us. Zyama brought them over to our place.

I have been corresponding with Frieda ever since and I also kept sending parcels to her. Frieda has a daughter Debba who has a daughter called Olya and then twins: Svetlana and Arkady. Frieda died in 1969. She was a cheerful woman, loved to sing and dance (even when she got older), loved saying all sorts of phrases in French and never complained about anything.

This is Aunt Frida with Tussya and Benno when they came to visit us before the war.

Frieda had kept a letter written to her by David Kiselgof during the time when he was 'courting' her. When Debba was 13 she knew this letter by heart, I have also read it, and we used to recite the beginning of it together: "Somewhere far away, in a distant provincial town there lives a man who respects you and loves you very much!" Tussya is here about 5 and Benno is about 4 years' old in this picture, so it must have been taken in 1914. Frieda must have been about 20. She died a sad and difficult death.

David died a few years before that. Their life together was a hard one. They lived in Moscow, but despite the many years spent there they hardly knew the city, they did not go out much. They moved from their old room in a small street in the center (the Karetny Pereulok) to a new 3-room apartment in a new district, so now it was Debba and the children who lived there. David had to fight very hard to get the apartment after the twins were born.

These are Dida and Nyusia (Aida and Beinus). Dida was born on 16 Jan. 1923 and Nyusia – on 10 Nov. 1919. They are Lazar's children.

Lazar, Father's younger brother, was a cheerful man, he loved to play with the children. He had lovely blue eyes, same as Frieda. They looked very much alike. I met him long after I met Father's other brother Aron because Lazar, Aunt Tsilya( his wife) and their children, Nyusia and Dida, lived in Libau for a few more years following our family's return from Russia. Nyusia went to Palestine in 1939 while Dida, our Didochka, can tell you everything by herself.

Father's sister Basya was the youngest. She was considered the prettiest of them all and she was very proud of her beauty. I remember seeing a photograph where she was dressed as a gypsy. She had violet-like eyes, black hair, fine teeth and pink cheeks. Everyone spoiled her; when we were still living as refugees she was given the best of everything. Her life was far from easy. She got married late, by an arranged marriage, after she came back to Latvia. Her husband Max was a wealthy man, he had a wholesale business dealing in spices. He was a rude man though. Basya had two girls, Rokhochka and Leechka (Rachel and Leah). I remember Basya's large wedding. I had a special dress made for me and Lazar and Tsilya with the children came from Libau to the wedding. Dida was then about one year old. (Is it possible though that the wedding was earlier than I think and Tsilya came later?)

Max observed all the Jewish holidays and because all the Eiduses were not religious all the three brothers and their families were invited to Basya's house for Passover. That happened every year. Basya did not lack anything, but she had a difficult life. I remember (was it 1939?) that someone came to our place and said that a woman threw herself out of a fifth floor window in the Old City (where Basya lived then). It was, in fact, Basya, but there was a lot of snow near the building and Basya did not die from that fall, but "broke into bits". She spent a long time in hospital where they "glued her together". She walked with a limp and had stitches on her face. The whole family perished during the German occupation. Rokhochka was 15 and Leechka 14 then.

I have never met my Father's father, but his mother lived with us in Crimea and she died when I was about 4 or 5 years old. I remember her picture: she was a respectable gray-haired lady who wore an antique wrap and sat very upright in her chair. Her name was Rachel. Basya's daughter was called after her. It is possible that her full name was Rachel-Leah and that was why Basya's other daughter was called Leah. I will come back later on to my memories of my Grandmother and her death.

World War I separated the Eidus brothers and sisters and only in the 1920's Aron, my Father, Basya and then Lazar came to live in Riga. Aron's wife, Sonia, was a small very plump woman. She was a wonderful singer and if she had a different kind of figure she could have become an opera singer. Their children were called Yoka and Tamara. (I shall write later on how we had met them when they came to Latvia. )

I remember one of the songs Sonia sang in her beautiful soprano: "A ring fell in the raspberry bush, into the blackberry bush… I went across a field, making up my light-brown braids, putting into them a silk ribbon and sprinkling them with gold… All you, girls, pretty girls, tell me the truth, where is all my gold…" Being only seven and a half, I did not quite understand all the words of that Russian folksong and so remembered part of it all wrong… (A few days ago I sang it for Lilya).

The Eidus families often visited each other and these visits were called "visiting our own" (in reference to a joke where the question "what is this very tasty fish stuffed with?" was followed by the reply "by its own self", i. e. fish). These "visiting our own" gatherings were great fun. We, the children, were already in bed, while we heard from the dining-room sounds of laughter and sometimes even singing. Sonya sang, sometimes Tsilya sang and my Mother and Lazar often sang too. Neither Father nor Aron had a singing voice or even a musical ear… These visits went on right until the beginning of the war, but the few years before the war they became rather rare, maybe because many things have changed.
My Mother died in 1935 and in 1937 Father married again. He married a young woman called Anna Zakharovna who was about 30 and who had a son called Koni. Only Sashen'ka lived with Father then because by that time Tusya and I were already married and so was Zyama. Father and his wife and her boy perished during the German occupation, and so did Aron and Sonia. (Yoka and Tamara, their children, were in England during the war). Lazar and Tsilya were evacuated (to Russia – Tr. ). Lazar died after the war, on the 5 of December 1945.

…As I remember Father was a heavy smoker. He usually smoked good cigarettes, the "Lady" brand. They were thin ones with a nice smell, and were sold in small packets of ten. They had a sort of a cloth pattern on the packet. Father smoked, coughed a lot and kept saying that he will try to quit smoking "on Tuesday" (Monday was considered a bad day to quit smoking; it was not all said seriously of course). Then Tuesday came and Father again postponed his decision to stop smoking, until the coming week… He never did stop smoking.

I also remember how he often said when he got up in the morning: "I don’t really feel well…" He never complained about anything specific, but he often said these words, very quietly and with a sort of a sigh. And I sometimes find myself saying exactly the same words when I get up in the morning, just like him. One gets the feeling of a 'heavy heart', not a specific pain or complaint. Maybe that was what he felt too…

They always used to say in the family that Father loved to dress well. There was very little money and there was often a sigh when he was putting on a pair of trousers that had patches around the knees, even though these patches could not be seen: they were done very expertly by tailors who specialized in this sort of thing. I had a special task: to fix his shoelaces in a certain way he liked: not one across the other, but in a ladder sort of way. When I grew up he preferred me to iron his shirts because I did it without creases. He began losing his hair fairy early and when his hair turned 'grayish' (and not yet gray) a bald patch began to appear. He then combed his hair 'to the side' and said that he had 'an extra supply' of them. I also remember that he used to put the very little children in the family on his knee and sing a well-known children's song about a cat who married a tomcat called Pyotr Petrovich.

I suppose Father was an ambitious man, because he was very happy to hear that we did well at school. He came home from work after I had already come back from school and he usually asked what marks did I get. I always got good marks, but if I said: "I got a 'five and a minus' (an equivalent of a 90 – Tr), he always asked: "What was the 'minus' for?" 'Four's (an equivalent of an 80 – Tr. ) he did not like at all. I was glad that I could almost always tell him that I got two "fives". I felt that he was quite content on such days and never asked for details regarding my marks. When he used to lie down on the large sofa to have a rest he sometimes asked me to sit with him until he fell asleep. He called me 'Lyubakha-rubakha' (Lyuba the shirt. It rhymes in Russian – Tr. ) and even though he was in a gloomy mood, I felt that he loved me.

Father had all sorts of jokes of his own and all sorts of nicknames he liked to use. He called Benno 'the Prince of the Sandwich Islands'. I don't know why. When we did not want to eat something Father used to knock angrily with his finger on the edge of the table and said: "You better eat that right away or I shall send you away to Rio-de-Janeiro!" When we grew up there was no need to name the city; he simply knocked on the table and asked: "Well, you remember that city?" We laughed and ate up.

When we lived on Melnichnaya St. in Riga (more about that later) Father worked as a sales agent for a firm selling herring. He used to be away the whole week and came back home on Friday evening. He brought back with him all sorts of food: butter, white pressed cheese, sausage, salt meat. He called all this "extra foodstuffs". I remember that when he was at home everything seemed a little more reserved and maybe a little stricter than usual.

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