Categories: Confessional and international relations, Ira Motolyga

I didn’t know at all who the Jews are. Once I came home and shouted, «Grandmother, close the door, it’s not true. He offended me, he bawled me out and I bawled him out».

Аnd how did you call him?

I called him: Jew, Jew, Jew. I didn’t understand what did it mean, and I called him like that. Grandmother laughed and said, «Ira, you are so stupid. You do not know anything, why did you say these words». I remember that. I didn’t know who were the Jews, who were they. In Orenburg nobody told you at all, nobody wondered whether you were a Jew or not. Or maybe I didn’t understand.

Did you adhere to the Jewish customs in the family?

No. By the way, on our end in Morozova street in Borisov all the Russians spoke Jewish, (in Lyozno) the Russians spoke Jewish too. In Lyozno the Russian boys spoke Jewish, and the neighbours never said bad things, I even didn’t know who the Jews were and who were non-Jews, nobody said a bad word. Here you go. I studied at school and didn’t understand. Those were the eastern Jews, when I got married he was a lad of the village. Nobody said anything. But here already, on the west (in Grodno) I could already hear more of these words. When I worked at the plant in Borisov after school, when I worked at the glass plant as a master, when I worked here, I could hear here and there «Zhidovka (a Jewess)». I didn’t pay attention any more. My husband, he was a Russian, was drawn a Jewish sign. And when he always came he asked, «Where is my Jewish chair?» He sat down… in one word, first they said something like this, but later when they came to visit us and across the street there lived a man who worked together with my husband, he still is alive. So he came to the plant and said to his colleagues, «They say that Sergey’s Motolyga wife is a Jewess, when I came to their place my jaw dropped. There was such a nice old lady, the mother is a neatnik. And about the house, you may eat soup in the toilet. So you see who these Jews are». And since then they stopped to tell Sergey anything.

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Researcher: Наталья Иващенко, кандидат исторических наук, ГрГУ им. Я. Купалы, Светлана Силова, кандидат исторических наук, доцент, ГрГУ им. Я. Купалы