Larisa Striliver

Intro - Can You Imagine?

For as long as I remember my mother, Larisa Striliver, she was spinning a story. A story from her past, our present, our possible futures. Here, in the US, I remember her telling the stories mostly in English, and sprinkling them with enthusiastic "Can you imagine?" and "I was so lucky". The stories were always coherent, colorful and mostly joyous.

My entire life I have felt a bit like a character in a story of hers. In her telling she endowed me with traits I never quite possessed but gradually developed to comply with her powerful storyline. For this, and countless other blessings she brought into my life, I am endlessly grateful.

Yonatan, the husband of my daughter, Judy, got to know Larisa when she was 94. He described her thus, “If you knew nothing about Granny’s life, but only listened to her, you might think that she had lived a life of uninterrupted joy. And she shared this joy with everybody.”

When my mother passed away we received many condolences but the more touching and telling were from Judy and her friends.

Larisa's granddaughter's (Judy) note

Nina and Judy,

I'm so sorry for your tremendous loss. The world lost an incredibly kind, warm, and vibrant woman, and I know you two have been hit with grief the hardest.

I will never forget the feel of her hands on mine. Holding, then grasping, as the story she was telling got more and more exciting (it always did).

And the bemused/adoring look she'd give Judy and I when we'd be silly around the house. Her artwork. Her laughter. The family-like warmth she displayed to all.

And the fierce devotion to family and matriarchy you all showed us, from the way you loved and cared for each other.

Amy Preiser (Judy's high school friend)

Hi Nina,

Judy shared with me the news. While I'm sure you're feeling a great deal of loss and sadness, I can't help but smile and laugh at all the meals I shared with Granny around your dining table.

I would imagine it's rare for a woman over 80 to amuse a group of teenage girls but she did so effortlessly. I felt like her grandaughter when I was around her. She was so warm and spirited and she drew me into her incredible life stories. I've re-told her stories of the train in Russia and coming to the US to many people over the years. She was just such a remarkable character. If there were an opening for a fifth member of Chall (Judith’s group of high-school friends), I would have nominated Granny.

Kate Harmatz (Judy's high school friend)

Just to give an idea of Larisa's verve, the video below shows her at 76, doing a high-school Tall Flags routine. She is being trained by her grand-daughter, Alice.

Kiev 1945 - 1946

With the war over, the evacuees were going back to their homes. Bronya and Larochka, already 7, went to Lvov where Bronya’s husband, David was transferred.

Larisa went to what she thought of as her home, Kiev, in hope of reunion with her parents and the strong desire to complete her education.

Kiev did not want her back. It was made abundantly clear to her when the university refused to re-enroll her since the course was now 4-years long and she has completed 4 years. However she could not get her diploma, since she did not complete the course of studies. Those people knew all about Catch-22. Larisa also could not get a job, since she had no residence permit and residence permits were only given to the already employed. Broken-hearted, she lived with a friend from her college years, Mira and her mom, Sofia, and tried to work things out.

In the meantime the ghastly information from Vinnitsa and war-time Kiev was making itself available. Larisa understood, that there will be no reunion with her parents, sister, or husband, who was completely lost to her.

However, as my mom used to always say, “I was lucky”, some kind people got her a temporary part-time job at the university which allowed her to work towards completing the university course. Which she did, and received the hard-won diploma.

With no family, job or place to live in her 'home town' Kiev, my mom re-joined her aunt Bronya and her family in Lvov.

War 1941 - 1945

In May 1941 my future parents, Larisa Striliver and Grigory Finkelstein, got married.

On the first day of Hitler's war with Russia, June 22 1941, Grigory was arrested by the government for allegedly telling an anti-government joke. Hope it was a good one, because it cost him 10 years of Gulag.

It looked like the government did not know that Grigory Finkelstein was married. The normal practice was to arrest both spouses and send them to Gulag. But my mother was lucky and the arresting hoodlums left her alone.

Meanwhile, my mother’s parents were in the Western Ukraine, where her father worked at the time. She did not know anything about their fate first hand. Only that Shaya lost Fanya somewhere in the crowd where she probably perished in the bombing. A broken man, he came back to Vinnitsa, to meet his bitter end with his extended family and the rest of Vinnitsa Jews. Right before the Germans occupied the city there were possibilities of evacuation but one of the influential family members, who was a Berlin-trained doctor, persuaded everybody that all these fears of the Germans are Soviet propaganda. “Germans are civilized people and are incapable of such atrocities”. Plausible as his arguments were, he was wrong. 38 people related to Larisa perished in the Vinnitsa holocaust.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_last_Jew_in_Vinnitsa

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/einsatz/bingel.html

In June 1941 my mother, 22 and all alone, knew nothing of all this and was hoping that her parents would come back to Kiev any day. One of these days of interminable waiting she went to the railway station to see off some relatives who were evacuating East. The railway station was surrounded by the Russian troops and nobody was let out into the city. With a few roubles in her purse and on high heels my mom got onto one of the trains. It was August 1941. The Babiy Yar massacres started in September. They claimed the life of my mother’s younger sister, Nyusya, then 17. As mom would say later with a sigh, "I was lucky".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babi_Yar

This eastward progress became part of my mother’s lore.

“ We moved by night and stopped by day. The German planes were flying overhead, spitting bombs. It was safer to get off the train than to stay there. But the tracks were strewn with corpses of infants.” This might be where my mother’s ambivalence about procreation came from.

“I was walking along the track and saw a German plane flying low, so low that we were easy targets. I could see the pilot’s face. It was a friendly face with a mop of blond hair. But the ground around me was covered with bodies of people he had shot. I smiled at him nervously, more a grimace than a smile. He smiled back at me, saluted and flew on. I was spared”.

Eventually mom reunited with her aunt, Bronya, the only other person from the Striliver family who survived the war being married to a Russian Army officer stationed in the East. Bronya Striliver was 32 and had a 2-year-old daughter, also Lara. And this these three people were destined to go through the war together, survive it and remain close for the rest of their lives.

2 Larisas during the war

After endless progress by train they were settled in Danilovka, Kazachstan. The town was centered around a gold (or diamond) mine, so, as my mother used to say, “again we were lucky, we had potatoes and did not go hungry”.

The war started as my mother finished her 4^th year of university course and was going into the 5^th and final year. So she did not have a university diploma. However, her education was deemed sufficient by the authorities to have her teach Russian language and literature in the local high school. Larisa took to her duties seriously, and being a naturally gifted teacher, she soon became proficient and gained the love of her students.

However, she felt she needed to complete her studies. With great difficulty she travelled to Tashkent where the Kiev University was evacuated to. After being enrolled in the university she saw that students were mostly used as slave labor and no studying was going on. At the University she met a few Americans, stranded in Russia with no hope of ever seeing their country of origin. They came to the new Republic idealistically, to help, got quickly disillusioned with the reality of the place but would never be let out. It was a cautionary tale of Russia's perfidy that I heard from the earliest childhood.

Seeing the futility of her attempt to graduate, Larisa decided to go home. For her, at the time, home was Danilovka, where the only family she had was located. University studies still incomplete, she went back to Danilovka.

On May 9^th 1945 the war was over and hopes of reunions blossomed. But they were to be dashed. The entire Striliver family, except for Larisa and Bronya, perished in the Holocaust.

Coda

In September 2006, at 88, my mother had a mini-stroke for which she refused to go the hospital. To my urging under the pressure of her favorite grandson, Greg, an emergency room doctor, my mother said, ”I am not going to let them kill me so that you have peace of mind”. I let her be. She recovered quite well. She read, painted, wrote and spoke on the phone. She also came to our house but only if I drove her. She was no longer leaving the house on her own.

This diminished but functional condition stabilized and we enjoyed my mom’s company, could talk to her, hug her.

Mom, in her apartment, telling a story, surrounded by her art

92nd birthday

93rd birthday

With me and Judy

Greg lives in Pennsylvania and every time I visited I brought enlarged prints of photos of Greg’s family. Mom cherished them, eagerly showed then to any visitor and would tell coherent stories of his life, filling in the blanks with her imagination.

Greg, Marsha and Evie

Mom was able to greet Judith’s husband, Yonatan, into the family in 2013 and hold their first child, Roat, in 2015, she saw, but already could not hold their younger daughter, Tiferet.

Yonatan, Judith, Roat and Tiferet.

Then the hard part started. My mom was no longer with me. Her body persisted, failing her at every turn, but where did her beautiful mind go? Mom still would have said, “Again I was lucky”: Greg, her oldest and endlessly beloved grandson, a doctor, was involved in his grandmother’s care. He was my support, my rock. Mom also had wonderful caregivers, Marina and Alla, who made her life as comfortable as possible to the very last minute.

On June 1st, 2017 my mother passed away in her sleep.

In her life she had one hospital stay: my birth.

My mother gave me firm instructions on her burial. “No burying into the ground. ONLY cremation. Disperse the ashes in the ocean.”

Such instructions are against the Jewish Law. Greg and Judith are observant Jews and were concerned. It did not make me happy to disrespect their beliefs, but my duty was to my mother, the dearest friend of my entire life.

We buried the ashes of Larisa Striliver’s body at sea on June 4th, 2017.
I will miss her for my finite forever.

Alla, I and Marina at my mon's burial

P.S. The Ring

In my childhood I remember my mother showing me a ring she always wore and telling me, “See, this is my mother’s ring, I wear it and remember her every day. Ninochka, one day, when I am gone, you will wear this ring and remember me.” Naturally, I was terrified of this talk and hated the ring.

Many years later we left the Evil Empire, and since one could not take out old jewelry, my mom had to leave the ring behind. An optimist and a pragmatist, she did not complain. I was overjoyed: the accursed ring was not going to haunt me anymore.

My mom, wearing the ring at the time of her wedding.

Years went by, and once, in some store, I saw a cheap costume ring in its shape and color similar to my mother’s ring. Almost as a joke, I bought it for my mom. She loved it and wore it often.

Mom wearing the costume ring

Many more years went by and my dear mother passed away. Sad tasks of closing out a life were upon me. One day, as Salvation Army was picking up my mom’s furniture, I heard a sound. A ring fell out of a crevice onto the floor. It was that very same replacement ring. I put it on.

And so it came to pass, just as you had said once, mamulya:

I am wearing your ring, I am thinking about you. And you are gone.

The costume ring on me:(

Long Beach 1984 - 2017

In September 1984 we moved to California. We really wanted to live in Los Angeles but rent there was too high (and still is), so we settled in Long Beach. A nice city, where my mom would live for 33 years until the end of her life.

The move turned out to be fortuitous for all of us. I, who kind of struggled in Chicago, fell upon the profession of computer programmer and stayed with it for the rest of my career.

My mom did great. She developed a pleasant circle of friends, both Russian immigrants and Americans. She was faithfully attending Long Beach Community College, continuing her education, spending a lot of time with my family and friends.

Mom by the apartmet building in Bixby Knolls, Long Beach, where we rented our first California apartment.

Mom exercising. Not a great pic but so her.

Mom, Greg and me with my mom's visiting friend from Chicago.

With friends

In 1985 I got married again and in 1987 my daughter, Judith, was born. My mom loved her with her entire heart and helped me with her a lot.

Mom with newborn Judith

Mom and Greg with newborn Judith

Mom feeding Judith

Mom and Greg around 1989

Mom, I and mom's close friend, Clara

Mom and Judy

1989

Mom travelled to Europe, Hawaii, Canada, New York, always regaling everybody with fantastic tales of her adventures.

In 1988, when my mother turned 70, she started something completely new. She began painting. She has always been good at visual arts but now she blossomed. Her work was even exhibited at Long Beach Public Library in 1996 under the title "The Meaning of Flowers". The next section of this blog is dedicated to mom's art.

Mom by her exibit.

In 1992 my marriage to Judith’s father fell apart and I started my life with my soul mate, Arcady. Granny welcomed him into her heart. She also formed a close relationship with Arcady’s daughter, Alice, who became her 3rd grandchild.