Павло Козленко Pavlo Kozlenko

We didn't understand at that time who was Jewish, who was Ukrainian, who was Armenian, who was Georgian. We didn't understand that, we were just all friends, we all lived somewhere in the same neighborhood, yes, in Moldavanka, I lived on Kolontayevskaya, we all lived there, and we went to school together, and we were friends, we would meet after school. And there were children of different ethnicities in our class, completely different. And we found out about it only when some kids were absent in the Ukrainian language class, for example. We said, "Why don't you attend [Ukrainian classes]?" "I was exempted, I am Armenian," for example, "I was exempted from the Ukrainian language, and I am Lezgin, for example, I was exempted from the Ukrainian language." At that time people of non-Ukrainian ethnicity were exempted from learning the Ukrainian language. But even though I am a Jew, I learned Ukrainian language at school, I learned Ukrainian literature, because my grandfather always said, “You should be an educated person. You live in Ukraine, you should know the Ukrainian language, you should know Ukrainian culture”. That is, you have to learn it all, and I learned it all.

Look, my mom worked in a polyclinic, initially in a hospital, then in a polyclinic, and my dad worked as a plumber — they went to work very early, and I went to school. And we would meet then in the evening: I would come from school, I would do my homework, my parents would come, we would eat, we would have dinner. What did we mostly eat? It was the same dishes that everybody ate: my mom cooked some borshch, my mom made it with chicken, if we bought some broth, it was some kind of stew, some kind of pasta, that kind of thing, yes. Of course, when it was a Jewish holiday (we celebrated mainly two Jewish holidays — Passover and Hanukkah), then, of course, I always remember that we cooked broth for matzah, matzah with broth, my mom made stuffed fish, my mom made stuffed chicken neck, things like that. Back then it was a delicacy, we didn't eat it every day, understandably, with the wealth we lived in, but nevertheless, we always came to my grandmother's house, she was already living in Odesa, my mother's mother, and we gathered at a big table, I had a big family, there were many brothers, sisters, many children. And It was always a big family gathering, we always celebrated these Jewish holidays. Among these ordinary holidays we only celebrated Victory Day, always this Victory Day, we would gather at my grandmother's house and celebrate Victory Day.

One of the stories is literally fresh, let's say, from before the war. When a woman who didn't speak Russian came to the museum and said something in German, I had studied German at school and knew some words. And I talked to her about who knows what, and we walked around the museum for an hour and a half, I gave a tour, and how we communicated, I still don't understand: she doesn't speak Russian, I don't speak German. We were talking about something, and she says, “What are you doing tomorrow? Can you drive me?" I was showing the gunpowder depots, we have a big scale model in the museum, she says, “Can you show me this model, show me where it is in person? I want to go and see it.” "Sure," I say! She says, “I live in such-and-such hotel, just come [pick me up] again.” Well, the woman there is a German woman, of age, she came, I took her, took her around, showed her the territory, where it was, once again there, I had looked up how to translate it into German, I started to tell her how it would be in German. She looked at everything... and then I want to interrupt, yes. And the next thing. A commission had already been set up, there was a commission before the war to build a memorial at the location of the Jewish settlement. I was a member of that commission. This woman, as it turned out, was the oldest member of the German Bundestag, member of the Green Party, European Union representative for Ukraine, in general, just so you just understand. Marieluise Beck. And she is in this commission, where there was the Israeli ambassador, the German ambassador, the Romanian ambassador, the mayor of the city, a number of other people, myself included, and the rabbi, and others. And she tells how it all started, and she says, “When Pasha brought me and showed me these warehouses, I came sick to the hotel, and I called Angela Merkel, and I said, and I'm her friend, and I said, you know what happened here, all the time, like, here we have to build memorials. So she said, yeah, we're going to support it." She just told her that episode, yeah. And it all began, and there was a competition, and they did a huge project, and the money was even allocated by the German government. The war prevented this memorial from being built. But there was this episode with this person. I didn't know who she was at all, and that's how it turned out.

I also involve my children [in the celebration of Jewish holidays]. For example, Hanukkah, there is such a thing as Hanukkah gelt, you know. There is such a tradition, my relatives also gave it to me when I was a child, they gave me money for the Jewish holiday, and I also teach my children about Hanukkah gelt, that it is necessary to give money for Hanukkah. We light a hanukkiah, there are candles there too, and at home as well, we light a hanukkiah for the holiday. You see, maybe it's not such a big deal, but I just remembered a phrase of my grandfather, who said that when they lit candles in the ghetto, my great-grandmother always said, “Now be quiet and listen to the rustle of the flame, here's the rustle of the flame — you can hear something in it.” And I also always tell my children, “We light the hanukkiah, and now, I say, be silent and listen to the rustling of the flame, maybe God wants to tell us or convey something to us," and that's it.