Crossing Flatbush Avenue Iozefa Viglina

Interview with Iozefa Viglina

I took an interview from Iozefa Viglina, one of my grandmother’s friends, who she knows from English courses they take together at the local Jewish Center.

“I came from Kharkov, Ukraine. I have been living in the United States for 17 years. I have a daughter in the U.S. who lives with her husband and 3 children. Everyone who I knew in Ukraine, either left or passed away. I have a son in Israel, whose wife died and now lives with his two sons. I worked as a lawyer and a law consultant. I came to the United States with my husband and mother in law. They were both sick and soon my mother in law passed away and then my husband passed away. Since the year 2000, I have been living alone.

I came to America because in the Soviet Union I had a very difficult life, there was anti-Semitism and both of my children left. I told my children who travel a lot, to never come to Russia or Ukraine because if they leave there with one dollar they should consider themselves lucky. There is banditism and the environment is very dangerous. My son in law had parents in the U.S. who came here a long time ago, which is why I came here. Now my son in law wants to go to Israel. A great fear of mine in the Soviet Union was that my grandson would be taken into the army. Both me and my son in law hated the Soviet power more than anything. My husband worked in the army and didn’t want to leave. He said that coming here would make him have a split personality because the U.S. was a completely different place from the Soviet Union, with different values and different people. He didn’t have the right to come because of the nature of his job, where everything was kept in secret and he knew too many secrets. The secret would “expire” in three years. He was willing to stay with his mother without me, but because they were both sick and he couldn’t take care of her or himself, they had to come. After those three years, we came and our son moved to Israel with wife’s parents. My son works as a mathematician.

I never lived in other countries. The United States has a much more humane and kind society than we had. We had bandits, liars, and anti-Semites. In 1937-1938 many people were arrested in the Soviet Union. I was 13 years old but I understood that was happening was extremely unfair, and that this was only possible in our country- a horrible country. In my neighborhood I had a friend who lived in London with her parents for many years. When they came to Moscow, her parents were immediately put in jail as spies. She knew English well and graduated from a University and got married. Maybe she was only married for connections, but she was let into the United States. I tried to find her when I came, but didn’t know her husband’s last name.

I had a common experience. I hate the Ukraine. I lived in Moscow for 30 years and that’s where I saw the greatest anti-Semitism. The fifth point (nationality) didn’t allow me to get a job. I didn’t learn Ukranian and didn’t want to. After graduating from the war time academy, my husband got a job in Kharkov. He was a colonel. This was a period of War with Cosmopoitinism (Jews).

I have good English skills. For a year before coming to the U.S. I studied English, and I studied it more, at the local Jewish Center after my husband died . My husband knew the language but more grammatically and not conversationally. I am comfortable speaking English to your grandmother and to people who speak slowly. Also I speak English to my grandson’s family because my grandson is married to an American girl. It is upsetting that I speak Russian so well and speak English so primitively. My grandson’s wife knows about Isadora Duncan and I try and explain to her who the Russian author Yesenin is. I read English slowly, with a dictionary, but still. Just like I don’t understand what Americans are saying, I don’t understand Ukrainians from villages. There is nobody to talk to. It would be easy if I would talk a lot.

I consider myself- I don’t even know who I consider myself. I have a passport, listen to the radio, and I could say that I love America, even though it has faults like any other country. I got my citizenship in 1998 together with my husband. I passionately wanted to get it. There are some things I don’t like in the U.S. The way we respected our parents and cared for them. I couldn’t imagine sending my grandma away to a nursing home. They do now in the U.S. Why? I’ll tell you a story: My friend asks me, “What should I do? I got a tray of silver utensils, plates, spoons, etc, from my friend whose mother died. I can’t take it”. I said, “Why not? She didn’t steal it and neither did you.” Then she found out that the friend’s mom didn’t die but was placed in a nursing home, and she didn’t know what to do with the stuff. This I really don’t like. In our group (English lesson group), there was a woman, 100 years old and in her right mind, sent away to a nursing home. Many children can care for their parents, but don’t want to. Especially in Kavkaz and Asia, there’s a special way of treating parents.

In a few years I see myself in the other world (dead). Like Sholom Aleichem said, “coming from the fair”. I think in the years to come, America will flourish, go forward, build new schools and not have so many bandits. This is the way we hope to see it, with a smart president.

All of my children are well provided for. My daughter and her husband live very well, even though he doesn’t have a job now. All of them have an education. The youngest is in a religious school. They follow all of the traditions without pressure. Nobody is taken to the police, because they are free people. My youngest grandson finished school very well- the best in his class. He got into NYU. When I talk to him, its like talking to a prince who has everything. My granddaughter in Israel, says that many in the U.S. have no troubles or problems. He’s from a different planet. Even if you read about our world, you wouldn’t understand it."