People
Kyzylorda through Esther Markish’s eyes
A doctor’s office, a school and two prayer rooms in the recollections of an exiled family.
Published
This is a translation. The original is Русский. Language review: not performed by a native speaker.
In her memoir “The Long Return”, Esther Markish recalls how, after six months in a settlement in the steppe, she and her son Simon travelled to Kyzylorda for a medical examination. Dr Teimuraz Dolidze gave them certificates for the commandant’s office and a letter to Edi Pokhis, a doctor at the regional tuberculosis dispensary. Through the Pokhis family, they met members of the local Jewish community.
Later, Simon obtained a job teaching English at the Lenin School. At first, Krikbayev, head of the city education department, said that there was no work. After Simon appealed to the regional party committee, he appointed him to the school. The headmaster, Yuryev, warned him that its pupils came from twenty-two nationalities.
Markish also recalls Lotta Rautenberg, a German teacher, and her husband Louis, a radiologist at the regional hospital. In the local synagogue, a corridor separated two rooms. European Jews gathered in one and Bukharan Jews in the other. According to Markish, this separation did not stop them from feeling that they belonged to a single community.
Visitors took turns staying in community members’ homes. The Markishes spent their first night with a tailor and his wife Klara. Their hosts gave Esther their daughter’s bed and made a bed for Simon on the floor under the table.