Rakhil (Raisa) Smushkevich

My mother, Smushkevich, Rakhil Moiseevna, was born the 10th of September, 1910. She was born in the city of Lubney, Ukraine. After finishing high school, my mother was admitted to the Kharkov Pedagogical Institute and that is where she met my father, Leonard. Soon after that I was born and my mother left school to be with me and to raise me at home.

In 1941, my father voluntarily enlisted in the Red Army and departed for the Front. My mother and I were soon evacuated to the Urals, to the city of Nizhniy Tagil.

During our evacuation from Kharkov, German aircraft attacked our train. We were then forced to evacuate the train. With the bombs falling and strafing bullets people were trying to protect themselves as much as possible. During the ensuing hour of the attack, lying on the ground my mother protected me with her own body. We barely survived the attack. My mother told me that it was the ingenuity of the train engineer who produced a large cloud of smoke that allowed most of us to survive. The enemy planes were simply unable to see us and were thus forced to leave. We continued on in the same train. I fell ill and developed a fever, later I was told that I had Scarlet Fever. We passed the city of Kupyansk on the way to a small city on the Volga River, the city of Kamyachin. There we boarded a steam ship.

On board, my mother noted that I was developing a reddened and swollen area behind my left ear. Luckily, on board the ship was a physician who told my mother that this is an infectious abscess and likely the result of me lying on the ground during the bombing of the train. My mother was advised that my condition requires a procedure to trephinate the skull. She was told that this requires a hospital. Given the current situation we were in, and all the illnesses I had, she was told that I would not survive to see our next train in city of Saratov. If I was going to survive at all, my mother was told that I needed to be placed in a very warm environment so as the abscess would mature and come to the surface. The only place on board that this was possible was the captain’s cabin. My mother begged the captain to allow us to use his cabin. She gave him all her valuable belongings including money, jewelry, and even my father’s clothing. The captain then obliged. We went to the cabin and it was filled with steam.

I suppose that God had intended for me to live since I survived to see the city of Saratov. I was taken to the military hospital but they had many more pressing issues to deal with the numerous wounded soldiers that were there, and new wounded soldiers are constantly coming, than treating a deathly ill 3 year old. It was only due the strength, perseverance, determination, and boundless love for her son, that my mother was able to convince a professor of surgery that he and not his assistant perform the needed operation. A procedure was luckily performed and lasted almost 5 hours. After the surgery, my entire head was wrapped. Such so, that only my eyes and nose were visible. This is how my mother found me after surgery. Soon later, the professor of surgery advised my mother that I was a very lucky child, in that only one in one thousand would have survived. Upon hearing this my mother collapsed and in took nearly ten days for her to recover.

I was in the hospital for three months recovering from my illness. I had weekly dressing changes. As my recovery allowed, I was let to walk in the hospital. There, with a large head dressing, I was talking and entertaining the many wounded soldiers.

I told them stories and the poems that I knew. My mother told me that I had reminded them of their children that they left behind. She also told me that the soldiers and the hospital personnel loved me. In the end of 1941, we finally settled in the city of Nizhniy Tagil in Ural. Our address was Village TEZ, Barrack 21, apartment 12. There we lived from 1941 to 1945. It is also where we received letters from my father. Sometime in the end of 1943 and the beginning of 1944, my father was listed as missing in action. He served in the city of Stalingrad. This was served with an official notice by the Soviet government on March 24th, 1947. In the city of Nizhniy Tagil, my mother worked as a director of a general and food market. She worked from six in the morning until very late at night. During the after noon hours she would rush back to me, to take me to the local clinic, to take me to the hospital for the weekly bandage changes. During the winter it was with me on a sled, during the summer it was with me in a home made wagon. The hospital was 5 km from our home. Gradually my wounds healed and to this day all remains is a small scar and depression in my skull.

The dedication and self-sacrifice of my mother to me is impossible to convey in words. She was a true Jewish Mother and only because of her I am alive. From the words of my mother, that to end my suffering while on aboard the steam ship, she was told by many that I needed to be thrown over board into the Volga River. My mother replied that she would then jump into the river with me. The generosity and care of my mother was reflected in her eyes, her word, and in all her actions. She was self-less and always provided help to those who asked. After a short period after arriving to Nigniy Tagil, she took in an orphaned girl, Olga Telegena essentially adopting her. She watched me while my mother was at work and we took her with us when settled in Kiev.

After the end of the Great War in 1945, we traveled and settled in Kiev, capital of Ukraine. Our address was Street Ivan Frankov, house 26, apartment 16. There my mother once again found a job as a director of a food store. In 1947, she married Arkadiy Veytz and in 1948 she gave a birth to a son, named Michael.

The energy and work ethic of my mother was hard to believe. She often times worked 12-14 hours a day, seven days a week, responsible for everything in the store. She has to balance everything, her time at home and at work. Many times payoffs had to be made to the police, KGB, etc. Many times, her employees would try to steal at every possible opportunity.

It is no wonder that her nerves were always stressed. But her strength of character always prevailed. She always loved her family. But her commitments and sheer obligation to work was such that I was being raised by housekeepers and was often times left to my own bidding. She simply had no time left for me and this situation also reflected on her.

It is with no doubt, that all the above finally began to take its toll and my mother’s health started to decline when she approached 50. She changed jobs and with painful and ill legs she continued to work for four more years until she could no longer. She stopped working and went on pension at 55.

When my son, Leonard, was born in 1968, and she first saw him, her eyes glowed with joy. She could not stop looking at him, kissing him, and holding him. She tried to help raising him as much as she could but her failing health and the fact that we lived in another neighborhood meant that we could not see each other as often. In July of 1976, my wife, my son, and myself immigrated to the USA. In January of 1977 we settled and live to the present day in Baltimore, Maryland. In May 1979, my mother and her family arrived and also settled in Baltimore. My dear mother passed away after a long battle with illness on September 28th, 1983. She was 73. She is buried on American soil, as was always her wish while living in Russia. Her memory lives and will always live in our hearts and in our future generations. May she rest in peace.

Always loving son Anatoly and family.