I know about my family from Rechitsa through my grandmother from mother’s side, Elizaveta Yakovlevna, she and my grandfather Boris raised me, so the readings of the first

books interspersed with memories of their childhood and evacuation.

Families were large on both sides. My grandfather, Boris Shustin, was one of the first  Komsomol members in Rechitsa and a loyal Communists who did not get out of the “trough”.

He modestly did his job: first in a shoe shop in Rechitsa, then at a factory in Kazan, where they sewed boots for the front. And after the war, he found the lost wife and children, repaired and sewed shoes, including those for famous ensembles.

 

My grandmother from the Plotkin family. Her father had his own grocery store, and her grandmother has gone ill after a German soldier slammed his rifle in her chest during World War I.

 

Her mother followed her and died at 32 from cancer (due to frustration), and my grandmother, a 13-year-old girl at the time, has replaced her mother to the babies, her four younger brothers. A part of the family – my grandmother’s uncle with his children – left during the First World War to South America.

My grandmother gave birth to my mother in August 1941 right on the road to Siberia, near Stalingrad, where one of her brothers went missing at the front (the rest died). She told how women threw out babies into the river and left to lie along the road … She lived until 1945 in a Siberian village, burying her father on the road, who could not stand the hard way on the supplies from Belarus to Siberia. 

Grandfather Boris with his sisters killed in Rechitsa

All the relatives of grandfather Boris Shustin died in Rechitsa – sisters with children in a common grave. They were, according to the stories, connected with the partizans. My grandfather’s father was killed by the fascists already in the last days – he was forced to take care of the horses during the occupation. My grandparents from my fathers side were from Bobruisk.

Mother Raisa

Unfortunately, there are no photographs left – the album disappeared after the death of my mother Raisa. She was a dental pediatrician and she died from cancer 11 years ago on the New Year’s Eve in the hands of my uncle Yacov, her younger brother (he was a big boss in the fishing port). Most likely, the album was thrown out by my stepfather, a terrible person.

Only a few photos left of Aunt Fani (my grandmother had four children; Isaac, the father of my cousin Yevgeny , was promoted to colonel, died recently), Faina is my favorite aunt, born in 1931, deaf-mute from childhood, because of meningitis, one of her sons died from the same reason.

Nicolay and Liza with their parents, 1993

I graduated from the Kaliningrad University, the industrial-pedagogical faculty. When I gave birth in 1991-92. two children, it was time for cooperatives. On the last courses of the university and after I worked as a teacher in a pedagogical institution, where schoolchildren studied different professions, I gave birth to Nicholay, and Liza was born after a year and a half. The market elements of the “dashing 90s” captured us, we tried to open a bookstore and etc., but we still didn’t have a housing of our own, we lived in a communal apartment with my old grandmother —there was one room for the four of us with a cat and a dog. After being involved into various construction companies and losing a lot of money … At last, in 1997,we ran away from gangsters and  We immigrated to Israel, with the program “First House in Homeland” – with the children and a cat into the bargain.

In Kibbutz Dan, who was mentioned in the book on the study of elementary Hebrew (we learned the language ourselves in advance, and because of it we were able to work instead of the kibbutz ulpan), we fired a little bit. Both local and olim children of ours were beating, but soon our dad fixed half of the broken TVs and electrical appliances, as well as bicycles to local grandparents, who quickly remembered Russian (from the 1930s they forgot :)) and the whole situation has developed to a very friendly atmosphere. We worked at the factories for the production of sprinklers. But for my husband there wasn’t such work, he began to cut vegetables (and his fingers) in the kitchen.

A year and a half later, despite the fact that the kibbutzniks would have been happy, if we stayed with them forever, we moved to Rishon Lezion. We listened to the advice of my cousin Yevgeny Shustin, a professor of mathematics at Tel Aviv University and his wife Emilia Friedman, also a professor of the same university – “living where schools are better”. I studied, and at the same time cleaned other people’s apartments and looked after the elderly, our dad studied as a programmer, he was the oldest there by age of 40+ years, The children went to school.

At that time, we began to prepare documents for moving to Canada -to our dad it was very hot in Israel.

We taught chess to children from 3-4 years … through checkers. Our dad was an enthusiastic checkers player (“under socialism” he managed to play at work, and not only checked and tuned instruments :)) At home we constantly played with each other. At the same time, we taught them to write and read Russian – even before Israel, we were afraid that “they would lose the language”. We supported Russian all the time, engaged with them and with the younger children who were born in Canada, so their Russian is the same as your and mine. The children know a lot about the culture and literature, and they make jokes and read jokes on Russian, although, thanks to the school, they have an excellent English (later they learned French).

In the kibbutz there were clubs for children. We gladly gave the elders to the chess club, and somehow, unexpectedly, Nikolay, not knowing the theory, started winning all. When we moved to Rishon, I began to look for something more advanced, and I found a wonderful club. We are very grateful to the Rishon Chess Club – on Saturdays we used to walk there for several kilometers, to play with the teams. The children, both Liza and Nikolay, loved to play there. At the age of 8.5, Nikolai began to study and for about six months or a year he studied with a wonderful trainer, Vadim Karpman, who began to teach him his theories. After a couple of months, Nikolai’s rating jumped from 1300 to 1700. He could go to Europe for the children’s championship, but it was time to say goodbye to Israel – we left for Canada on December 30, 2001.

We didn’t use the Internet at that time, and didn’t have acquaintances, we went there through a lawyer who we “fed” very well here, and there. We went, thinking this: “Toronto is a big city, which means that there is chess in it too. But then the chess was presented here very poorly comparing to Israeli standards.

Initially, we worked as a transporter in bakeries at night – at a minimum wage. Because of the mad speed of the line, the back, the arms, the joints – everything was “gone”  After a year of such work  we gave birth to Serezha and organized a home kindergarten “Noritsyn daycare” – licensed, four years later we gave birth to Vanya.

Alexey (my husband) began to help me with the children in the kindergarten. Over the years we have educated two hundred children. We started with English speakers, then switched to Russian speakers, when our district became from “Canadian” to “Russian-Jewish”. Laws changed over time and it became possible to keep only 5 children in the house, but now we have passed licensing and have taken a sixth.

Many children from our kindergarten get into the program for gifted children, since we are “in the subject line” – two of our younger children study there, having successfully passed the test. The children starts in our kindergarten from 10-12 months and we bring them until the school – up to four years. Ivan teaches them music, a yoga teacher comes, and I teach everything else. We do a lot, but the main thing is to teach children to respect each other and “peaceful coexistence”, i.e. social skills.

After arriving in Canada, we almost immediately took a mortgage and bought a house, small and old. Then we moved to a newer and a larger one, because our entire household did not fit in to the old one, because we had a fourth child, Ivan. We worked from seven in the morning to seven in the evening, in the first years we took babies both at nights and on weekends.

Sergey in the center – gives gives first lessons and Ivan – on the right

All our four children play chess, they play a lot of sports – they became American champions in sambo and judo, then there were several years of swimming school, serious drawing, the youngest wanted to learn piano and violin, and now they have introduced programming lessons. The younger ones – they are in the 6th and 10th grades now – there are a lot of home lessons, a lot of additional mathematics. The children participate in mathematical competitions and win prizes.

Liza – graduated from university

My daughter Liza graduated from a university, works in a pharmaceutical company, and married a native Canadian, Alexander May.

Nicolay at the 2018 chess Olympics in Batumi

Nikolay became the champion of Canada in chess among adults at the age of 16 – the youngest in the history of the country. He is an international master and coach of FIDE, since he was 12 he has been training his students.

Children adore him, several of his children won prizes at world championships, many became champions of the country at their group age. My daughter played on the Internet for a long time on the chess portals; at the university she was one of the organizers of the chess club.

Nicolay plays with Sergey in the competition

The middle one, Sergey, started playing in adult competitions from 4 years old, he was the champion of the country up to 8, 10, 12 years old, went to the world championships with his elder brother (Nikolay was the team coach, and Sergey played in his category). At the last time, he played very well at the age of 14 -I think. he divided 15-17th places “in the world”. He also gives lessons to children from the age of 12, and children love him very much.

Ivan, the youngest one,  plays in Sunday competitions and in the club

We are promoting chess

Life in Canada as a whole is, of course, much calmer. In recent years, a huge influx of the Asian population is evident – its actively reflects on chess, and sets the rhythm in schools, and in universities it creates competition. Despite the mixture of many different nations, with different levels of development (in addition to professional emigration, a huge number of refugees from hostile territories surrounding Israel are entering Canada, which has already begun to change the country’s appearance and the internal state of mind), most still obey the laws. Order is more or less maintained, although crime has, of course, increased over the years, and the houses decorated for Halloween and Christmas have diminished due to changes in the national composition.

There is enough bureaucracy everywhere, especially in the Russian consulate  But everything else is computerized, which makes life much easier.

The climate in the city is quite hot in the summer, in the winter – severe, strong winds blow from the lakes. Many Russian-speaking and Hebrew-speaking people live around Toronto and in it, even many streets near us are called “Or Yehuda and “Ner Sderot”. A lot of synagogues, private Jewish schools and clubs, many parents sustain Hebrew with their children and etc.

The nature is beautiful, many wild, but half-domesticated raccoons, squirrels, foxes, rabbits – they jump right in the parks.

It is difficult to judge health care, it’s better not to have problems.  I’m even afraid to think about retirement – The pension is very, very modest. Therefore, I wish you all health and long years!

Tatyana Noritsyna  (Frenkel)

Toronto, Canada

Translation from Russian in original  by Igor Shustin

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Posted 12/03/2018 21:54