Sashen'kaCHAPTER 7 Sashen'ka was born on the 19th of January 1923, soon after we came back to Latvia from our forced "exile" in Russia. At that time we lived in some furnished rooms at No. 5 Noliktavas St in Riga. I remember how Mother changed his nappies, how she left him naked in a room with an open window to get some fresh air, etc. During that summer, when he was about six months, we lived in Bulduri. Sasha had a high pram and he was left sitting in it in the garden. . We had a picture of him: a sunburned black-haired little boy in his pram. During the next summer we did not live in Riga as the parents probably did not find a suitable apartment and we found ourselves in Mayori, at No. 11 Victoria St. I once went over there to have a look at the house, but it had all been rebuilt and changed. I shall write some more about Mayori later. Usually during the day Sasha used to sit in the kitchen and play with pots and pans. He especially liked to play with the lids. When he became one year old, there was a very festive birthday party: lots of people came to us to celebrate and stayed with us for 3 days. Since there was a lot of snow sled-riding was organized for all and, as I remember, the horses had bells fastened to their harness. I remember a noisy dinner, the grown-ups had lots of fun, and many sleeping places were made up for the night. That was quite a celebration… The next summer, when Sasha was a year and a half, our family lived in Avoti (Edinburg 1). There was an incident there that everyone remembered for years. Tsilya, Nyusia and Dida were staying with us then (the dacha was a large one) and one day suddenly everyone noticed that Sasha and Dida were nowhere to be found. Everyone ran to look for them everywhere and they were finally located some three or four streets away. They both decided – at the age of one and a half! – to "travel" and went out, holding hands, from the garden into the street. They went off in the direction of where Sonia lived then. After that they were looked after more carefully, of course. When I was a little girl, when we still lived in Crimea, I very much wanted a little baby of my own. I even convinced Mother that if ever she will have another child, she will give him to me "as a present". So, when Sasha was born I was convinced that he was "mine". I played with him, put him to bed and spent a lot of time with him. Sasha wore his hair long for quite a while; boys quite often wore long hair and had it cut in a manner that women also wore their hair then; this hairstyle was called "Bubikopf" (" Little Boy's Head"). We had a picture of Sasha at home where he was wearing a Pierro costume (white polka-dots on black background), with wide pants and a large white collar and he had long hair and a fringe. He was photographed while looking aside and holding his hands in his pockets. The picture was taken after Sasha had been invited to a birthday party which was a masquerade. Sasha was given that costume at the party and was photographed in it. One day I came home from school and saw that Sasha's hair was cut short and all they left him was just the fringe. I cried a lot that day, having felt that I had been robbed of something. They cut off his beautiful hair without asking me, and he become so different, not "mine" anymore. He was about 6 then and, in fact, at that time he "left" me and became more of Zyama's friend than mine. They had all sorts of mutual plans, went off somewhere together, Zyama took him on a boat trip on the Daugava (the river Riga was built on), etc. I was very upset, very envious, suffered a lot but there was nothing I could do. Zyama simply "lured" him away. Later on there was a period when Sasha and I were again following a similar path in life. I remember there was a meeting of our underground movement group that took place in our apartment. At the end of these meetings we usually played some games. Sasha took part in them. Soon enough he also joined an underground youth group, the Pioneers, and did so together with his best friend, Yossele Shteiman. There was also a third boy, Yulik Toffelberg. I met Yossele Shteiman in Moscow during the war (then he was still Shteinman). I think it was in 1943. He suffered an arm injury and had remained in the rear. Later on he was one of the first men who came back to Daugavpils (Dvinsk) after its liberation. He worked there and also participated in Komsomol activities. He went back to his studies and graduated from a teachers' college. After obtaining his Master's degree he proceeded to receive a doctorate. I have some of his books which he gave me as presents. He is now a History Professor. Sometimes he comes to visit us when he comes to Riga. Yulik, who also fought in the war, married Bella Gites. Bella was in love with Sasha for a very long time (I don’t know whether he felt the same towards her. ) She was sent into exile by the Soviet authorities in 1941 together with her parents. Rather, her parents were ordered to leave while she could have stayed behind in Riga. She told me much later that she had called Sasha that night and asked him whether she should go with her parents or remain in Riga. Sasha said that she should join her parents and she did. After the war she came back to Riga and came to visit us together with Yulik. Tusya was just a little baby then, so it must have been the end of 1946. After they spent the evening with us, just before leaving, they said: "We got married". During the war Bella found my address and she used to write to me, asking about Sasha. Both she and Yulik studied in the evening: he studied economics and she did financing. Their daughter Vera studied medicine and I remember passing on to her some of Tusya's textbooks. I think she graduated this year. During the first two years of primary school Sasha went to a Jewish school, but after it was closed, he was transferred to a Latvian school. He did well at school and the usual comment about this was: "like all the Eidusses". His favorite subjects were, like in Zyama's case, mathematics, physics and chemistry. During his high-school years he was already active in the underground movement and was considered something of an authority. After Mother's death we did not live together for very long because two years later Father got married again. Sasha stayed with Father's new family and they moved to Mariinskaya St. This is where the Victoria Hotel stands now (No. 55, Suvorov St. ). When Zyama came back from the war he went over there and even saw some of our old furniture that Father had kept… The date of the 17th of June 1940 when Soviet troops entered Riga was connected, for me in any case, with a sad incident: Sasha was injured. I remember how we all went out to see the Soviet tanks near the railway station. Then some troubles started there, the crowd started singing the "Internazional" (the anthem of the world Communist movement) and the shootings started. I had to run back home because little Iren was left home all alone. After a while there was a ring at the door and when I opened it I saw Sasha. He was calm but very pale and then I noticed that there was blood on his shirt: on the sleeve and on the front. "A stomach injury, like Benno's!" – I realized. I did not cry, but I felt shaken inside. I helped Sasha to remove his shirt and to wash his wounds. One bullet went through his arm above the elbow, but did not touch the nerve, the other went through his stomach, but did not cause any serious damage. That was real good luck! Some sort of an "official" doctor came to see him and Sasha stayed with me for about three days. Then he just got up and said that he was fine. He left and I really do not know how he spent the summer of 1940. Like everybody else he must have been very busy with his work. After all, the regime was now a Soviet one and all our dreams came true! I have learned partly from him and partly from others what happened to him at the beginning of the war and afterwards. In the beginning of the summer of 1941 he began working as a Pioneers' group leader at the summer camp at the Pioneers' Palace in Riga. (Dida was there then too and Iren was with her). When the bombing started, the summer camp was closed and Sasha went off, together with other Komsomol members, in the direction of Tzesis. However, after some time on the road he saw that he could not go on walking because of his bruised feet. Together with a group of Komsomol members, he changed direction and they later found themselves in the Prechistensky Region of the Yaroslavskaya Oblast (district). There they all ended up living and working in a local 'kolkhoz' (collective farm). Here is what I remember of my last meeting with Sasha. In July 1941 I also found myself in the Prechistensky region. Suddenly one day Sasha came to see me. It was a hot summer day. He was wearing old trousers and a faded blue shirt torn in several places. He had a small bag with him, his sole possession. At that time I did not have any information about anyone in the family and our meeting was both a sad one and a happy one. Sasha told me that he and several other Komsomol members were staying some 3 kilometers away from the village of Koza, where we lived. He heard about me quite by chance from one of the other evacuees. While he was talking I had washed his shirt and after it had dried quickly in the sun I started mending it. I was fighting back my tears. I said to him: "Sashen'ka, stay here. I will soon be moving to Yaroslavl. I will work and you will be able to stay with me!" His reply was both quiet and confident: "No, first we have to gather the harvest!" He left me, after having promised to come and visit me again, but we did not get another chance to meet. After a while, when I was already living in Yaroslavl, I heard that Sasha was at the Yaroslavl recruiting board. I went over there as quickly as I could, but by the time I got there Sasha and the others were already sent off somewhere. Soon afterwards I received a letter from Nata Buss, the Secretary of the Komsomol Central Committee of Latvia, where she wrote that Sasha was in Moscow, in a special army school and I will not be able to see him there. Six months later, when I was already in Kirov, I received a letter from Zyama which also contained Sasha's letter sent to him (Zyama was in the army then). This was Sasha's last letter. It survived by miracle, after all I did not think that it would be his last… Sasha's letter written on the 12th of March 1942, when he was with the partisans: "My dear comrade, brother Zyama! It is the third time that I have been trying to write to you: the first time I could not find a way to send you my letter, the second time – the letter was destroyed in a fire, and now is the third time. So many things have changed. However, I will start exactly the way I started my first letter to you. I left Riga together with a group of Komsomol members from our district and we went to the town of Valka, where we met with some others. Then I was sent to the rear, to the vicinity of an industrial city. We worked in a kolkhoz (a collective farm). There were 20 of us: 14 fellows and 6 girls. Eight of the boys were from my own Komsomol group. The conditions were very difficult. Many of the group members could not keep up with them. I think you will be glad to hear that I did very well, both morally and physically. A short time before we volunteered into the army I and three other fellows were given work at the MTS (the section of the kolkhoz that mans agricultural machinery, tractors,etc. – Tr. ) By the way, first Iren and then Lyuba also moved into the district where I lived. Then they moved into town. The Komsomol District Committee sent me to a special task with the RKKA. After the course we were waiting to be sent off and had to move a lot from place to place. Again and again something happened and our sending to the front did not take place. I was together with some nice fellows and we really got on well together. However, recently we were divided into groups and I, with two others, had been sent to do something else, even though similar to what we had trained for. We are now getting training and will obviously be sent off soon. There are quite a lot of men from your unit here. I have heard a few things about you, but I would like very much to get a letter from you. That should better happen soon because we shall soon be leaving here. If you have contacts with Lyuba or other friends and relatives, let me know. Also, write to them about me. Lazik and Balin' are sending their regards. * Do you know anything about Yulik? My address is: PPS P. O. 21. The Spure unit. Private A. Eidus P. S. I forgot to congratulate you on the birth of your little boy. Now I am finally a full-fledged uncle and not just and aunt. ** Do write what his name is since I could not make it out from Frida's card to Lyuba. Where is Fanya? P. P. S. I hope we shall be able to talk about everything in our home town. " * Komsomol members Lazik (Isroel Itsik) and Paul Balin' both died in the line of duty behind the enemy lines. ** Until that time Sasha had only nieces and he used to joke that he was not a full-fledged uncle, but just an aunt.
The contents of the letter are so typical of Sasha. It is a serious letter but it also has some humor in it. When I
received it and kept reading it again and again I was both proud
of Sasha and felt sad for him. … Many people told me about Sasha's
death, but it is hard to be sure that everything had happened the
way it was related to me. It was sad to write all this and it was hard to go back to the memories about him. I remember him as a little boy with his thick "corkscrew" locks. I remember him when he was 6, when he first had his hair cut without my consent and I cried. How I envied Zyama. I remember him when he was 10. I remember how Mother loved him, the youngest of her children… And, of course, I remember very well our last meeting on that hot summer day in the village of Koza… This is the picture of the memorial board erected at the No. 19 High-school in Riga following the efforts of Eva Vater, herself a Jewish war veteran. The board commemorates the students (Komsomol members) and the teachers of that school, who died during World War II. There is a picture of Sasha and a brief biographic reference in the lower right corner. The copy of his last letter is also there. I wonder how long will this memorial board be kept in its place…
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.JPG)
Tsilya
and Dida came to Riga about that time (was it for Basya's wedding?)
and Sasha and Dida were photographed together. It was an
interesting picture: Dida was born three days before Sasha was,
so they were really of the same age, yet Sasha was a much larger
boy, a rather robust one with a round face, while Dida was a delicate
little girl with large blue eyes. Sasha had brown eyes, really dark
ones. Everyone loved this picture and I was always sorry I never
had a copy of it. Then suddenly Yoka found it and I took it from
him to make a copy. So, the day when this picture was made became
the beginning of the friendship between Sasha and Dida that lasted
right until the beginning of the war. Sasha and Dida became another
"team", like Benno and Tusya and Lyuba and Zyama. .JPG)
Sasha
grew up well and healthy, I don't recall him ever being sick. After
the summer in Avoti we moved to Riga and settled in a new apartment
at No. 2 Dzirnavu St. ,where we lived for ten years. We all went
to school and Sasha stayed home with Mother. He was always busy
doing something. He had beautiful brown hair, thick and curly (the
curls were what the fashion then called "corkscrew" curls). Once Mother was even stopped by someone in the street and told off
for having curled the little boy's hair. Later, after his hair was
periodically cut off, the curls disappeared. Sasha liked very much
to put on Father's old cap and to wear his slippers. He walked around
the apartment wearing them and always played with something. (Everyone
said that he looked very much like the popular actor Jacky Coogan. )
This is how he was photographed and this enlarged picture was displayed
for years in the window of the photography shop in Elizavetinskaya
St. (later Kirov St). Mother wanted to buy that picture from the
photographer, but either it was too expensive or the photographer
refused to sell it, so she never did. It was a wonderful picture
and I am very glad that the little picture survived, so that I could
make a copy of it. .JPG)
Sasha,
Yulik and Yossele were friends since high-school. Bella was
a year younger but they must have been connected through underground
activities too. I remember Sasha came to visit me together with
Bella when Iren was about two years' old. All of them are photographed
here: Bella is in the centre, in the front row, and Yulik is behind
her, while Sasha is on the extreme right. I think the picture was
made some time before the war. .JPG)
This
picture is probably Sasha's last picture. Here he is in his last
year of high-school. He was the school's Komsomol secretary. The picture was dated on the back: 11th February 1941. Just a short
time before the war…
.JPG)
The
man who told it to Ida Levitanus, a member of my underground Pioneers'
unit and a friend of Dida's, died soon after his meeting with Ida. He told her that when the Soviet troops landed in Latvia, there
was an order to send some men with hand-grenades towards German
tanks. There was a call for volunteers and Sasha got up. This was
the way he died: alone with a hand-grenade, moving towards the tanks…
Sasha's name was included in the army archives in the list of those
who fell on the front. He died on the 26th of June, near a place
called Sorokino. 