Raphael Chernin
Engineer
Tell us a little about your career.
I am a toolmaker engineer by profession. I worked at several factories in Kharkov, Ukraine. When I came to Canada in 2002, I had to start all over again, and I decided go into machining. I worked for almost ten years as a turner machinist and a milling machine operator. Imagine a large factories that experience all kids of breakdowns that require urgent on the spot repair during the course of their operations. That's what I was doing.
Why did you choose to live in Thornhill?
This area was not chosen by me, but by my daughter. But I like it first and foremost because a large number of Jews live here. I feel like a member of a large Jewish family in this area. Where does your family come from? My father is from Austria-Hungary – most likely from the Czech Republic. In 1905, he and his family came to Vitebsk, in Belarus, which was then the center of Jewish life. My father went through the war, became a communist, and nevertheless continued to secretly adhere to Jewish traditions. He kept a prayerbook under his pillow and always read before bed. My mother is from Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine. Her father, who came from a Polish Jewish family, lived and studied in France and became a mining engineer. In the 1900s, the French mastered the extraction of iron ore in Kryvyi Rih, and my grandfather came there with a French company to construct the mines. These mines have survived there to this day. In his family, Judaism was strictly observed according to all the laws of traditions; everything was kosher, and they celebrated Shabbat and all the holidays. My grandfather died of altitude sickness. While working in the mines, coal or metal dust settled in his lungs. My mother was the fourth child of nine children in this family. She managed to observe Jewish holidays in the Soviet Union, but keeping kosher was a challenge. My mother scrupulously observed the fast on Yom Kippur, and this was very important to her. How did we know about the coming of the Jewish holidays? There were 120,000 Jews in the million-strong Kharkov population – more than 10% (even in the 1990s). Some with connections in Israel would receive a Jewish calendar from Israel and make copies. At my mother's place I saw the thinnest piece of tissue paper, which was the 8th or 9th carbon copy of a calendar typed on a typewriter. This is how we learned about Jewish holidays.
If you had the opportunity to meet anyone in history, who would you choose and why?
I have met more than once with the famous military photojournalist Yakov Ryumkin and would gladly do so gain. Yakov Ryumkin was born in 1913 near Kiev, began his professional career in Kharkov and continued it in Moscow, becoming a photojournalist for the Pravda Newspaper and the Ogoniok Magazine. He was a member of the pool (working group) of Khrushchev's journalists. He had no formal education, but became a famous journalist, beginning with articles that were published in local Kharkov newspapers with wonderful photographs that he took himself. He was self-taught and incredibly well-read, an excellent storyteller. He covered the entire war from beginning to end, reaching Berlin and constantly creating a photographic chronicle of the war. The famous writer Konstantin Simonov described the story when Yakov was sent to film the hostilities during the Battle of Stalingrad. There was no free space on the plane, except for the gunner’s position, so Yakov sat there. Somehow, without stopping photographing, he managed to shoot down a German plane. Yakov Ryumkin was a heroic man who could do anything in the name of shooting. Once he was assigned by one of the Kharkov editorial offices to take a series of photographs of Kharkov. Ryumkin conceived something unusual: he decided to make aerial photography from an airplane. To achieve this with the technology available at the time, they tied him to the plane with a rope to the plane, opened the door, and took pictures while leaning out, practically falling out of the door. The pictures were amazing. Nobody did that at the time.
He was friends with the composer Matvey Blanter, author of the famous song Katyusha. To the words of Konstantin Simonov (with whom Yakov was also friends), Blanter wrote the "Song of Correspondents" dedicated to Ryumkin. Yakov was also friends with the writers Boris Polev and Mikhail Sholokhov. He spent three months living in the North Pole research station, drifting on a giant ice floe, and during this time he created numerous pictures of life in the far north.
What are your plans for the future?
I have grandchildren to whom I devote all my time. I want to live happily ever after with them.
