“If we had wings we would fly to you”. Kiril Feferman
and Lisa, reflected her own point of view well enough or—this seems to be more likely—she did not wish to publicly voice her disagreement with her aunts, in order not to upset her uncle Efim.
Tamara was employed and was able to provide for her family. She stayed in Ordzhonikidze until early June 1942, when she returned to Rostov-on-Don. She was murdered, with the rest of her family, in August 1942, in the village of Rogovskoe in the Rostov District.
6) Vladimir (Volodya) Meerovich, date of birth unknown. Volodya was married to Tamara Meerovich and was the father of Grisha.
Vladimir Meerovich, Tamara, and their son Grisha. Courtesy of Yad Vashem Hall of Names.
Volodya was employed in a relatively important position in one of Rostov’s plants, and was probably a member of the Bolshevik Party. In November 1941, he defended Rostov-on-Don fighting in the ranks of the so-called “Extermination Battalion.”60 Then he was evacuated, together with his plant, to the nearby city of Ordzhonikidze. In early March 1942, Volodya and his plant were evacuated back to Rostov-on-Don. On April 21, he was conscripted into the Red Army. His last letters show that he was still alive in April 1943. He received information about the fate of his family before he was killed in action against the Germans in mid-1943, apparently intent on avenging their murder.
The Pinchos family consisted of:
7) David (Dod or Doda), born in Rostov-on-Don in 1912, was an “employee” (sluzhashchii). He was married to Tsylya Pinchos and was the father of Anya.
David Pinchos. Courtesy of Yad Vashem Hall of Names.
David served in the Red Army from fall 1941 to spring 1942. He was released from the Army in spring 1942 due to his very poor health. He returned to his family in Rostov-on-Don and was murdered with the others in the Rostov District in August 1942. He was not involved in the correspondence.
8) Tsylya, born in Rostov-on-Don in 1914 to Avraham and Anya Greener, was married to David Pinchos, and was the mother of Anya.
Tsylya Pinchos. Courtesy of Yad Vashem Hall of Names.
Tsylya seems to have had no formal profession, but took occasional side jobs as a tutor. She was evacuated with her daughter, together with the Meerovich family, first to Budennovsk, and then to Ordzhonikidze. She returned to Rostov-on-Don in early March, 1942. She was murdered in the village of Rogovskoe in the Rostov District in August 1942.
The youngest generation consisted of the two Meerovich and Pinchos children.
9) Grigory (his formal name, which the family never used. He was usually called Grisha) Meerovich was born in 1936 in Rostov-on-Don and murdered in the Rostov District in August 1942.
10) Anna (her formal name, which the family never used. She was usually called Anya, or Anechka) Pinchos was born in Rostov-on-Don in 1935, and was murdered in the Rostov District in August 1942.
Ania Pinchos. Courtesy of Yad Vashem Hall of Names.
On October 13, 1941, several days before the Germans seized Rostov-on-Don, Tamara Meerovich, her son Grisha, mother Monya, and her cousin Tsylya Pinchos with her daughter Anya were evacuated from the city by train to Budennovsk in the Ordzhonikidze District, situated some 580 km to the south-east of Rostov-on-Don.
In the first half of 1942, the two evacuee branches of the family returned to Rostov-on-Don. In March 1942, Tsylya Pinchos was the first to go back, with her daughter Anya. On June 2, 1942, Tamara Meerovich, with her son and her mother, returned to Rostov-on-Don from Ordzhonikidze. In the first half of July, they moved to the village of Rogovskoe in the Rostov District. They were murdered there during the German occupation in August 1942.
Grisha Meerovich and Anya Pinchos, 1936–1937. Courtesy of Yad Vashem Photo Archive.
1 On the general history of the Jews in Odessa, see Steven J. Zipperstein, The Jews of Odessa: A Cultural History (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985).
2 Jarrod Tanny, City of Rogues and Schnorrers: Russia’s Jews and the Myth of Old Odessa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 30.
3 On this pogrom and more generally on the strained relationship between Jews and non-Jews in Odessa in the years preceding the pogrom, see Caroline Humphrey, “Odessa: Pogrom in a Cosmopolitan City,” Ab Imperio 4 (2010): 27–79.
4 See, for example, Firouzeh Mostashari, On the Religious Frontier: Tsarist Russia and Islam in the Caucasus (London: Tauris, 2006); Russian-Muslim Confrontation in the Caucasus: Alternative Visions of the Conflict between Imam Shamil and the Russians, 1830–1859, ed. Thomas Sanders, Ernest Tucker, and Gary Hamburg (London: Routledge Curzon, 2004).
5 For example, Timothy K. Blauvelt, “Military-Civil Administration and Islam in the North Caucasus, 1858–1883,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 11, no. 2 (Spring 2010): 221–255.
6 The Pale of Settlement was the area where Ashkenazi Jews were specifically permitted to live in the Russian Empire. Non-Ashkenazi Mountain Jews, who were regarded by the Imperial authorities as native peoples (gortsy), were permitted to live in the North Caucasus region, where they generally did not face the restrictions applied to Ashkenazi Jews. However, after 1887 Mountain Jews also experienced a deterioration in their standing. Ekaterina Norkina, “The Origins of Anti-Jewish Policy in the Cossack Regions of the Russian Empire, Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century,” East European Jewish Affairs 43, no. 1 (2013): 62–76.
7 Mikhail Gontmakher, Evrei na donskoi zemle. Istoriia, fakty, biografiia (Rostov-na-Donu: RostIzdat, 1999), 20.
8 Ibid., 20–21.
9 Ibid., 22.
10 Ibid., 23.
11 Ibid., 25–28.
12 Ibid., 29–31.
13 Ibid., 41–42.
14 The Mountain Jews were a small ethnic group, originally made up of Persian Jews, but much influenced by the surrounding peoples of the Caucasus region. See, for example, Sasha S. Goluboff, “‘Are They Jews or Asians?’ A Cautionary Tale about Mountain Jewish Ethnography,” Slavic Review 63, no. 1 (2004), 113–140.
15 Sergei Markedonov, “Evrei v oblasti voiska Donskogo v kontse 19—nachale 20 veka,” in Trudy Vtoroi molodezhnoi konferentsii SNG po iudaike—“Tirosh” (Moscow: Sefer, 1998), http://www.jewish-heritage.org/jr2a18r.htm, accessed November 30, 2011.
16 Gontmakher, Evrei na donskoi zemle, 59–61.
17 Ibid., 20–21.
18 Ibid., 23.
19 Ibid., 38–39.
20 Ibid., 49.
21 Ibid., 55–56, 75–76.
22 The Black Hundreds (in Russian—Chernaia sotnia) was a vaguely defined Russian nationalist movement that started during the First Russian Revolution (1905–1907). It was vociferously anti-Semitic, and its members took an active part in pogroms against the Jews. On this movement, see Walter Laqueur, Black Hundred: The Rise of The Extreme Right in Russia (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1993).
23 Ibid., 109–111.
24 Andrew N. Koss, “War Within, War Without: Russian Refugee Rabbis during World War I,” AJS Review 34, no.