Hana Fridlis
Health Care Professional
Please tell us about your career.
I am a paramedic. In the Soviet Union, I graduated from the University of Medicine in Chisinau, after which I worked as a head nurse in a large (299 seat) kindergarten, which belonged to the Chisinau Vibropribor Factory. On the day the Yom Kippur War began - September 3, 1973 - we received permission to leave for Israel, and a month later we departed. In Israel, I completed courses at the Rothschild Hospital and became a registered nurse. Then I graduated from the the Medical Care & Administrative Program at the University of Haifa, and I became the head nurse in the clinic. My eldest daughter studied music, and my youngest studied painting and she is now a graphic artist. Thirtysix years ago we came to Canada.
Tell us about your family.
My paternal grandmother, Sura Gelman, came from a family of Breslov chassidim. She celebrated the Sabbath and all Jewish holidays and, of course, knew Yiddish. Her husband, my grandfather, the handsome Azril Strazhnikov, worked as a cooper - he made barrels. They lived in Uman, where Jews from all countries come to the grave of the Rebbe Nachman, the righteous founder of Breslov. My grandfather was very religious, and for the last twenty years of his life he served as a cantor. There was no synagogue in Uman at that time, so the local Jews gathered for the holidays in someone's house. They also baked matzah before Passover. My grandparents had six children. One of their sons, Abram, was wounded and returned from the front disabled with the rank of captain. The husband of their daughter, a lieutenant, died in the first days of the war.
In 1914 the First World War began. My mother's father, Joseph Yaroslavsky, was immediately taken prisoner in Austria, and soon after that my mother Haika was born. My grandmother, my mother's mother, Khana, whose name I bear with great pride, traveled with her neighbors in a wagon to perform a bris (circumcision) for her newborn son in 1919. On the way they were attacked by bandits who wanted to kill my mother. The neighbor, crying, begged: “She grew up before my eyes, please don’t kill her!” And the bandits ran away. My mother, returning home in a terrible shock, did not pay attention to the fact that they put the baby on the stove and forgot about him. The child died. A few days later, my grandmother died of grief.
After the death of my grandmother, my grandfather Joseph married her younger sister, Lyba. They had a son named Sanyk. In the first year of the war, Lyba ended up in a ghetto in the town of Teplik, while my grandfather and Sanyk managed to escape. They met a Polish neighbor who lived nearby with her Ukrainian husband. The husband's brother collaborated with the Germans. The Polish woman said to my grandfather: "I'll leave the latch open, and you and your son slowly go to the stable." The stable had a cellar where vegetables were kept. There they hid my grandfather and Sanyk. Soon the Germans placed their stable upstairs. Meanwhile, young Ukrainian girls began to be sent to work in Germany, and the people who hid us also hid their daughter in the cellar where the grandfather and son were. The Polish woman, pretending to go down for potatoes, brought them food. My grandfather's son, Sanyk, almost lost his sight during his stay in the dark cellar. Lyba remained in the ghetto. One day a Ukrainian policeman gave her a shovel and said: "Dig!" She dug a hole, and they shot her.
In July 1946, my parents gave birth to a girl, who was named Lena in honor of Lyba's grandmother, retaining the first letter of her name. Having lost her mother early, at the age of nine my mother washed earthen floors in the house and baked bread. My mother was unusually beautiful - a brunette with bright green eyes. In 1933, my grandfather's family and my mother left for the Crimea to the first created Jewish collective farm where my mother collected wheat and stacked it in stacks. The collective farm gave excellent harvests, but it was soon shut down. Hunger had begun. A relative came from Kyiv and took my mother with her. There, my mother rented a corner in the apartment where the Jews lived, and went to work in a printing house, having learned how to type. When she received a salary, she sent a parcel with brown bread to her relatives. Returning to Teplik, she met her father, Volodya Strazhnikov, who came from Uman to visit a friend. In 1935, my mother got married and left with my father for Uman. There was no work at all, so my father went to Chisinau in search of work. My father had golden hands. He made excellent barrels, from a small barrels with a tap for wine to large vats. After securing a job, he called his family to Chisinau. Before every holiday, at home they cooked a big turkey and baked, and my mother went to the synagogue, where hundreds of Jews gathered, and distributed money to the poor.
I am 85 years old, my husband and I have lived a decent life - more than 62 years together. We have wonderful children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I wish everyone happiness and health.
