venberg_r писал(а): ↑14 май 2020, 20:44
Оказывается, вирусолог с мировым именем. Мы никогда бы о нем не узнали, если бы не ковид.
Profesorul Bernard Roizman, un virusolog de talie mondială, născut la Chişinău şi plecat în SUA în 1947, predă încă la Universitatea din Chicago, chiar dacă are 91 de ani.
Отрывок из его воспоминаний:
PRE–WORLD WAR II
I was born in 1929 in Chişinău (Kishinev), the capitol of Bessarabia — then a part of Rumania. Bessarabia was part of Russia before 1918.
The native languages were Russian and Moldovan, a Rumanian dialect. My parents escaped from the Soviet Union independently. Although my father's roots were in Bessarabia, he lived in Odessa. My mother's family lived in Moscow. Her mother died at birth and her father remarried. Her parents, a stepsister, and a brother remained in Moscow. My mother and her older sister escaped to the west. My mother remained in Bessarabia with a distant relative while her sister settled in Belgium. I do not know how my parents met. Suffice it to say that they met, married, and had me. We were of Jewish faith but really did not practice the religion. Before marriage my father traded in currency. In response to my mother's objections he started a small knitting mill. The factory grew from two people to fifteen; it made gloves, scarves, and sweaters. The factory was an extension of our home. The language at home was Russian.
Life in Bessarabia was not easy. By joining the winning side of World War I, Rumania acquired portions of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Transylvania, Bucovina, and Banat), Russia (Bessarabia), and Bulgaria (Dobrogea). Rumanian authorities discriminated against the Jews and particularly against the Russian-speaking fraction of Kishinev's population. Every home had to post a large sign stating “Speak only Rumanian.” Although primary education was obligatory and open to all, admission to secondary school was restricted: No more than 5% of the students could be of Jewish origin. The competition was fierce. In preparation, when I turned five my parents hired tutors to teach me to read and to speak French and Rumanian. In essence I had no free time to play. The only game I was allowed was chess. My recollection of those years is that I ran away from home as often as I could. The policemen in the area knew me and promptly escorted me home. To motivate me to study my father gave me a dog. The dog, a Belgian shepherd, became much attached to me. If my mother wanted to punish me, she had to lock up the dog first. By the time this was done the intensity of punishment plummeted.
I started grammar school at the age of six. I was frequently punished—on my knees at the corner of the classroom or with a ruler on my bottom for answering aloud a question posed to another student. In 1939 I successfully passed an examination and entered a French-Rumanian secondary school for boys. Unlike at the primary school, each subject was taught by a different instructor. At the beginning of the school year, the instructors openly asked each student to describe his national origins and parents' occupations. In the case of the Jewish students, no matter how well they did in their tests, they invariably got a 4 (equivalent to a D grade) on their report card. This grade became converted into a 9 upon the payment of a fee for a “private lesson” to the instructor. Outside their home students had to wear a dark blue uniform with a number embroidered on the sleeve. My number was 317.
In the years from 1938 to 1940 Rumania was shaken by major political upheavals. The Iron Guard, sympathetic to Nazi Germany, agitated for power and for expulsion of all but the purest of Rumanians. Every evening my parents and I were glued to the radio listening to shortwave broadcasts detailing events in Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia and the political scene in Rumania. We were well informed.
In the summer of 1940, Bessarabia was unexpectedly, overnight, occupied by Soviet troops. To the Jewish population of Kishinev the Soviet occupation brought relief from the threats of Nazi movements in Rumania, but for us, new and significant problems arose. Foremost, my parents left the Soviet Union illegally after the revolution. During Stalin's purges, such crimes were punishable by a death penalty or at best by exile to Siberia. It turned out, however, that my parents were accused for a more readily identifiable crime, that of exploiting workers in their factory. To atone for this crime, my parents were persuaded to give the factory as a gift to the workers, vacate the home, and relinquish all of its possessions. In return the penalty was exile to a small village near the Russian border. We expected that this was but the first step and that ultimately the destination would be Siberia.
We woke up on June 22, 1941, to the sound of exploding bombs—the start of World War II. It soon became clear that the Soviet troops would withdraw. Within the Jewish community there were extensive discussions whether to leave with the Soviet troops or remain and face the Rumanian-German occupation. The Jewish community was well informed of the rise of concentration camps in Germany. The fact was that the Jews saw the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia as an escape from the rise of Rumanian Nazism, and the Rumanians could be counted on not to forget the welcome given the Soviet occupation. I recall a night of heated arguments pro and con, but in the end, the risk of discovery of my parents' past was small, there were few possessions to tie us down, and reason prevailed: We decided to leave Bessarabia even though the Soviet occupation rendered us totally destitute. In retrospect, this decision saved our lives. We returned to Kishinev, collected my father's sister and her husband, and left.
Escape from the Front Lines
Our trek from Kishinev across Ukraine to the Volga River took two months. We walked, and sometimes hitched rides on hay wagons, trucks, and at the end of our voyage on top of open coal cars of a freight train. During the early days of the trek on foot we were frequently strafed by German planes. On one occasion we became separated; I ended up with my aunt and uncle. Fortunately because strafing was frequent we made contingency plans to press on with a specific destination in case we were separated. We were robbed once, but there was not much to take, and at that point all remnants of our prewar life were lost forever. Our fluent Russian helped. We were stopped only once, at the train station of Poltava by the deputy mayor of the city, who recognized us as foreigners. Because it was summer, I had left in shorts and had no other clothing. He took us to a refugee center, gave me my first pair of long pants, fed us, gave us new identities, and directed us to a city on the Volga known as Marxstadt. Throughout Ukraine, we were fed and, as was the case in Poltava, offered shelter, a chance to wash up, and even clothing. The people we met were kind and very helpful. But uniformly, we were told that they looked forward to the arrival of the German army. <...>
Return to Home Grounds
In 1944 the front line moved past Kishinev, and we bribed the local police to let us return to our hometown. We traveled in cattle cars—50 people to a car. We slept on the floor. The train took four weeks to reach Kishinev. There was no food and no facilities on the train. Fortunately, the train seldom traveled more than a few hours per day, and food could be purchased at stations along the way. Kishinev in 1944 was a destroyed, desolate city. The Jewish population was sent to concentration camps and none returned. We also learned that my mother's sister and her husband from Belgium perished at Auschwitz. A week after our return we went to Chernovitz, Bukovina.
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.11 ... 114-054829