|
Schneider Family
Memoirs of Paul Schneider
(1929 - 2013)
“THE STORY OF ONE FAMILY”
CHAPTER - "ORIGINS"
In the ancient city of Tbilisi, which name comes
from the Georgian word "tbili" (warm), formerly Tiflis, as the
Russians called it, there lived a Jewish family named Schneider. This Jewish family with a good reason is
recognized as one of the first to settle in Tiflis in the middle of the
19th century.
Leiba Schneider, a Jew from Ukraine served as a
soldier in the Russian army during the time of The Emperors Nicholas I and
Alexander II and received a permission to settle in Tiflis, Georgia as a
reward for his faithful service to
“The Tsar and The Fatherland”.
He came to Tiflis after taking part in the Crimean
War. He was a poor artisan, a tailor.
In 1874 his son, Abram (Abrasha) was born. Leiba died relatively early, and
Abrasha’s mother Dina, nee Barskaya, remarried, already with several
children in her arms. The surname of
Abrasha's stepfather was Salman and he was a craftsman by profession - a gold embroiderer. The family was very poor.
Subsequently, Abram often recalled how he walked
barefoot in the snow, since there was no money even for the cheapest
shoes. Since his childhood Abrasha
helped his stepfather who taught him his craft and soon the student
significantly surpassed his mentor in his skills. Poor Abrasha worked hard and tirelessly
and managed to become a prosperous person, the true founder of the
Schneiders family. Young Abram Leibovich served in the Tiflis Officers'
Assembly of gold embroidery as a master and soon, with the financial help
of a wealthy Russian merchant from Moscow whom he often visited to get the
supplies, he opened his own business - a store of military goods, which
brought a good income.
There was a gilded frame in a conspicuous place of
his store that displayed a copy of the Certificate issued by the Officers'
Assembly and in calligraphic capital script confirming that Abram Leibovich
Schneider was a master of the highest class.
Young Abrasha
was twenty – four when he met his faithful and devoted life
companion - Ida Tukhman , a 16-year-old young lady from a very poor and
large Jewish family from the city of Vladikavkaz. Soon they got married and found an
inexpensive apartment in Tiflis.
Their first child, Lev was born in August of 1899.
The prosperity of the young family grew every day.
Four years after the birth of Lev, Moissey (Mossya) was born.
It was June 1903 - the eve of the Russo-Japanese War and the 1905
Revolution: the beginning of the great upheavals.
However, aside
politics the peaceful life went on as usual. Abram Leibovich (1874- 1948),
being an intelligent and perceptive man, knew perfectly well from his life experience
that a modern young man needs to be given a good education so he could live
well. And even more so - to a Jew!
Abram Leibovich and Ida Petrovna firmly
decided to send their children to the gymnasium. First, Lev went to the kindergarten,
and four years later, Mossya. The young parents were happy and proud. After
all, their sons became the students of the best on the Caucasus – The First
male gymnasium - named after Emperor Alexander I the Blessed, on Golovinsky
Avenue near the Palace of His Majesty's Vicar in Tiflis. Studying well in
those early days was not easy at all: the requirements were very high. The teachers were very educated and
intelligent people, they all had the status and the ranks of civil
servants. For example, the
headmaster of the gymnasium was in the rank of the general, the Full State
Councilor.
Abram Leibovich tried to collect a home
library with the help of idle salespeople distributing books from
publishers such as “Tovarishchestvo”, “Sytin”, and etc. Abram Leibovich himself did not
understand this at all and relied entirely on the competence of the
distributors. After all, he himself barely mastered literacy only at the
age of 26 and read all his life, whispering aloud, although he studied
newspapers "from cover to cover" and, most importantly, made
mature and even wise conclusions from what he read.
Lev Shcnaider (1899 - 1973) on Nov 21, 1917
Lev did well in general, he especially liked
and succeeded in history, foreign laguages, Russian and literarure. As for Mossya, he caused a lot of troubles
to his parents, as neither he liked studying, nor was he behaving at
school. He was expelled for poor
academic performance and bad behavior from the First Gymnasium and his
father had to really try hard to get him into the Fourth Gymansium on Belgiyskaya
street, not far from the Reutovskaya street, where they now lived in their
own house. The school was not as
prestigious as the First, but Mossya graduated from it and received the
“Certificate of Maturity”. Much to
the disapointment of his parents, he decided not to continue his education
after it. However, this did not prevent him from remaining a kind,
sympathetic, sweet and intelligent person all his life, who was loved and
respected by everyone around him.
Meanwhile, events not only in Russia, but
also in Europe did not take long to surface. In the summer of 1914, the First World
War broke out. Russia almost
immediately entered into it on the side of the military alliance of the
"Entente" (Great Britain, France and other countries) - against
Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and others like them.
Despite the war and the unstable political
situation, the economic life of Russia, especially at the beginning of the
war, flourished. This tendency directly affected the commercial affairs of
the relatively poor merchants like Abram Leibovich. All the officers who served in Tiflis knew
his military store. People would
come for Mr. Schneider's goods not only from nearby cities as Baku, Batum,
or Vladikavkaz (where Abram
Leibovich met his future wife Ida). The goods of his gold-embroidery skills -
embroidery with gimp on shoulder straps, epaulettes, aiguillettes, banners
and other attributes of military ammunition - were known in Moscow and even
in St. Petersburg, renamed into Petrograd at the beginning of the war.
Ida Tukhman – Schneider (1881-1953)
Abt. 1914-1918
Abram Schneider's store was located between
Vorontsov’s Bridge and Alexander’s Garden and was open from early morning
until late night. Trade was going on at full speed. Late buyers were often the
officers stopping by on their way from the opera and drama performances, as
well as after parties and revelry in restaurants on Golovin’s Prospekt.
They emerged from the phaetons, often accompanied by gorgeous ladies
dressed in the latest Parisian fashion and wearing an expensive French
perfume. And the officers, being dandies and mots, bought from Mr.
Schneider magnificent epaulettes, embroidered with gold, shoulder straps,
sabers, checkers and even revolvers.
When it became obvious that a war was about
to break out, Abram Leibovich took out a large loan at an interest to
replenish his store with all kinds of goods popular among the
officers. That greatly alarmed and
frightened Ida Petrovna, who was absolutely incompetent in financial
matters. However, these goods - sabers, checkers, revolvers and other
military equipment got quickly sold out.
Abram Leibovich not only returned the colossal debt and paid off the
interest, but also managed to earn a tidy sum. Abram Leibovich was afraid of investing
money in the purchase of gold and jewelry: firstly, he didn’t have a support of Ida Petrovna on that, and he
reckoned with her very much, and secondly, he himself was not very well
versed in the nuances of financial transactions. Therefore, Abram Leibovich preferred to
acquire real estate. He bought a two-story house from the bankrupted prince Argutinsky. The house stood on the quiet Reutovskaya
Street, near the Main Post Office on Mikhailovskaya St., not far from
Vorontsov’s Square, in the very center of Tiflis. He also bought a large plot of land on the
outskirts of the city, intending to build a villa there over time. Moreover, he even bought a car for
Mossya, that was considered an extraordinary rarity and luxury at that
time.
Meanwhile, the events in Russia and around the
world, developed dramatically. The
Emperor Nicholas II, under the pressure from the progressive leaders of
that time, abdicated in February 1917.
Power in the country passed to the Provisional Government.
The Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin managed to
win over a significant part of the "working people" with the help
of false communist propaganda. They
were promising land to the peasants, factories to the workers after the
so-called "proletarian revolution". They
declared a "war on palaces" and an "expropriation of
the expropriators", that meant
the elimination of the private property.
The world war which claimed tens of millions
of people was drawing to a close.
The whole world was waiting with the bated breath for the onset of
the long-awaited silence.
It was just a few years prior to these
events, at the very beginning of the war, the tsar, on his way to the
Turkish front, called in Tiflis, where he was enthusiastically greeted by a
jubilant crowd of townspeople. The state flags of the Russian Empire hung
everywhere, and expensive Persian carpets adorned the carved balconies of
the houses.
The day when the Tsar visited the 1st
gymnasium was remembered by Lev and Moissey for the rest of their lives.
Nicholas walked along the carpet path, laid from the palace of the governor
of the Caucasus to the gymnasium, accompanied by the governor and other
high ranked persons. The Tsar was in the rank of colonel, granted to him by
his father - Emperor Alexander III. This was the law that was approved under
Peter The Great. The King was a short man with a kind face. He was dressed in a Cossack uniform and
looked, in the eyes of the
ten-year-old Moissey , not at all
like the Emperor of All Russia.
Moissey thought that the Tsar was supposed to be a giant. The boy who was looking for a Tsar but
saw a simple Cossack officer instead suffered a great disappointment. Both,
Lev and Moissey, remembered this event all their lives.
Then came the revolution and with it - the
civil war. In October 1917 Lenin, the
greatest adventurer of the 20th century, and his associates
seized power. The Russian Soviet Republic was proclaimed. All power in it was concentrated in the
hands of the Soviets of Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies, under
the leadership of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks).
Most advanced figures in Russia and around the world believed
that this would not last long, that soon everything would return "to
normal", and law and justice would prevail. But history unfortunately
for a long time refuted the "truth" of these hypotheses.
"Bolshevism" - one of the most bestial, cruel and inhuman
political trends in the entire history of civilized mankind - held out in
Russia, and then in Eastern Europe for more than seventy years and sowed
deep roots of hatred, evil and cynicism, possibly for centuries to come.
The events of distant Petrograd could not but
affect the political and social life of Georgia, where the Mensheviks -
nationalists took power into their own hands. Georgia was proclaimed the sovereign
republic.
Lev Schneider in 1917
The State University was opened in 1918 on
the basis of the Tiflis noble gymnasium.
Lev Schneider, who had already graduated from the gymnasium a year
before, entered the university as the student of the medical faculty
fulfilling his father’s wish of his son becoming a doctor.
1918
Lev
Schneider – University Student
On February 25, 1921, the so-called
Twenty-First Army, led by the Bolshevik commissar Sergo Ordzhonikidze,
defeated the weak army of the Georgian Mensheviks and victoriously marched into Tiflis.
With the arrival of the Bolsheviks repressions
began and the owners of small businesses and shops were first to
suffer. Little the Bolsheviks cared or took into account
the fact that people who owned this property were able to do so by working
long hours as Abram Schneider did.
The plot of land on which he was going to build a villa got
confiscated from him, as well as his house on Reutovskaya St., and the
shop. They did allow him to open a
tiny workshop that occupied a small part of the former trading floor
thankful to the fact that the red commanders and security officers liked to
dress up in a beautiful military uniform with shiny gold insignia. Abram Leibovich, a high-class gold
embroiderer, was working in this workshop from morning till night without
assistants as a "lone handicraftsman." He was systematically paying exorbitant
taxes to the treasury. Somehow he
could still support his family.
By this time, the department of the medical
faculty at the University in Russian was closed, and Lev, who did not know
Georgian well enough, had to quit his studies. It was almost impossible for
an intelligent young man, the son of a former "bourgeois", to get
a job. Mossya worked part-time at the airport, helping mechanics there to
repair airplanes. The money he was
earning there was barely enough for his pocket expenses.
One night, the Chekists broke into the
apartment on Reutovskaya Street and demanded Abram Leibovich to hand over
all the gold and jewelry he had to
the Soviet Authorities. Abram
Leibovich said that he does not have such. After all, he really did not
have either gold or jewelry, since he always invested in
"business" and real estate, which were taken away from him. A search was carried out. The whole house
was turned upside down, but nothing was found. Then Abram Leibovich was
ordered to get dressed and follow them, as it turned out later, to the
prison. He stayed there for a month,
until Ida Petrovna bought gold jewelry with borrowed money somewhere on the
black market, took them to the Cheka and rescued her husband from trouble.
This is how the Bolsheviks not embarrassed by the means created their
predatory economy.
On the photo Schneider Family – 1922
From left to right sitting: Lev
Schneider (1899 – 1973),
Lida Rovner-
Schneider (1900 – 1969),
Abram Leibovich Schneider (1874
- 1948),
Ida Petrovna Tukhman –
Schneider (1881 – 1953)
Standing: Moissey Schneider (1903 – 1973)
In the meantime, Lida and Lev decided to get married. Lida Rovner
studied at the Second Women's Gymnasium, which was located on Velikoknyazheskaya
Street, near Petrogradskaya Street. At the same time, Lida successfully
studied music - she studied piano.
In January 1922, they registered their marriage in the civil
ceremony, but at the insistence of the parents, they also got married at
the synagogue, having received a certificate from the rabbi, which turned
out to be very useful to them in the future. The wedding was modest and it was
celebrated in the bride's house as it should be according to the Jewish
traditions. Only close relatives and friends were present. Before the end
of the honeymoon, Lev and Lida began to get ready for a long journey - to
Palestine. “Ideological” preparation for this turning point in the lives
of the young spouses Lida started
even before the wedding.
Lev and Lida in 1922-1924, Palestine
Lida and
Lev finally arrived at the Palestinian port of Haifa, where they
were greeted with delight by the relatives and the friends who had arrived
there earlier. Their life in Haifa
began with unforeseen difficulties.
The apartment they rented had no basic amenities, not even water. Drinking water was delivered in the
barrels by the carts, and you had to pay for it separately: this was not
included in the price of the apartment. To get a job was very hard. Neither Lev, nor Lida knew English and any
office or institution work required knowledge of it. In addition, they did not really know how
to do anything. Lev had not yet managed to become a doctor, as he dropped
out of the university, and Lida could only play the piano from notes. Fortunately, Lev was hired as a courier,
or rather as an "errand boy", by some rich American Jew - an
engineer, and Lida got a job as a pianist in a movie. They were surrounded by friends and
family, so everything didn’t seem too bad at first.
It must be said that despite very strict laws
against the emigrants, in the early years of Soviet power, relatives were
still allowed to visit them. The energetic Elizaveta Abramovna (Lida’s
mother) took advantage of it and came to Palestine for a short time to the
great joy of her children, although she remained extremely dissatisfied
with their life in a “foreign land”.
Then Lida’s
difficult pregnancy was added to all
the troubles. It ended in the birth of stillborn twin boys. After this blow
of fate Lida fell into complete depression, and she only wanted one thing:
to return to Tiflis, home, to her mother. Parents from Tiflis were also
insisting on their return, especially Abram Leibovich and Ida
Petrovna.
In general, Lida and Leva did not manage to
adapt to the difficult life in Palestine, and in 1924 they received
permission to enter Soviet Russia, which they did and later in life repeatedly regretted.
To Read More click CHAPTER -
"HAPPY-JOYFUL LIFE"
|
