Адель Діанова Adel Dianova

"Some Jewish organizations began to be created, Jewish communities, and all Jews began getting closer to their roots. When I became the director of that organization, Hesed, which still exists at 30 Kotliarevskoho Street, I met people in Israel, artists, poets, writers who hailed from those cities [of the former Soviet Union], some from Riga, some from Moscow, that is, Russian speakers. And when I started working there [at Hesed-Arieh], he [Giora Moiseev] told me, 'You have to make sure that these old people, the Jews, they come to us now, and that young people who want to come here come to us, that they are interested.' So I started studying the culture, and I wanted to bring back what happened before the [Second World] War, to bring back the roots. This LvivKlezFest was one program, and I also created a Jewish theater, there was a Jewish theater here before the war, actually, it was in the T[eater of the] Y[oung] V[iewer], and its director and main actress was Ida Kaminska, who later won an Oscar and died already in New York. I reestablished a Jewish theater, a Jewish song ensemble, a Jewish dance ensemble, we were restoring all of this... we had a motto of No Tumbalalaika, No Hava Nagila. We just took only what we could find there, in the roots. We brought back these songs, these plays! It was very interesting."

"The theater [Borys Ozerov's Gaudeamus]... grew from a student theater, but later became a professional one. The first teacher and first mentor was [Roman] Viktiuk, a friend of the Theater, a friend of Ozerov, and he had a great creative influence on the Theater. It was an avant-garde theater, so very modern. And in those days in Lviv, when Ozerov's performances were held, you couldn't get tickets. And these theaters: The Pryk[arpattya] M[ilitary] O[krug], T[heater of the] Y[oung] V[iewer], [Maria] Zankovetska Theater — come every one, the tickets are plenty. Once, there was even an episode, my father had never been to any of my performances, he rejected it, he didn't want to know about it, and he wouldn't go. And actually, at one such time, when the play V Spiskah Ne Znachilsya [Not Mentioned on the Lists] was going on, my father called me. I was already living on Artema [Street] when my father gifted me a cooperative apartment... I already had a husband. My father called me and said, 'Get me two tickets for your Lists'. I said, 'Are you going to go?' — 'No, not me, the chief engineer is asking.' That is, it wasn't even possible to get tickets, that's what kind of theater it was. I have to tell you that for every performance, a whole commission would decide whether we could [stage] it... We were banned from performing [Alexander] Griboyedov's Woe from Wit. The commission came, 'No, you haven't studied the materials of the XXVI Congress [of the CPSU], you haven't studied enough, it's obvious from your play that you haven't studied enough.' [That is,] we didn't study Griboyedov's Woe from Wit enough. This was the kind of theater that received very thorough attention from those authorities. We often traveled to Moscow, we were considered the face of Lviv, and we were invited. It was a theater that was respected. The repertoire was rich: from [Vasily] Shukshyn, from [Vsevolod Vishnevsky's] Optimistic Tragedy, where I played the commissar, you know? Why me? Our Ozerov is a very interesting person. I said, 'Why?' — 'Because all the commissars were Jews, you will play a commissar.' But when the commission was deciding whether we could perform or not, Ozerov was summoned to a meeting with the authorities and told, 'Why did you cast a Jew in the main role of the commissar?' And he said, 'Who were the commissars? Larysa [Rozaliya] Zemliachka, Raikhner, they were all Jews, those girls.' — 'Let them be even negroes, but you have to replace her in the play with a woman of our ethnicity.' Yeah. And he did. But then the play disappeared, because the role of the individual in history is still important. He found a replacement in terms of face, but he did not find [a replacement] in terms of temperament and acting abilities."

"The entire [Nemyrovycha-]Danchenko Street on the other side is full of gardens. We spent all our time in these gardens: climbing trees...I used to climb trees like a boy… we made some houses for ourselves, played different war [games]. I remember very well that we played partisans and Germans, and every day, someone was a partisan and someone was a German, and the next day, we switched. When I was a partisan, the Germans caught me, and I had to divulge something, I don't remember anymore, some secret, I didn't divulge it, I didn't want to divulge it. They hanged me from a tree, and I would have died, for sure, because they really hanged me if my neighbor from the house across the street hadn't seen me, ran out, and saved me. Those were the games we played, quite role-playing. Well, a lot of things... all these people, children with whom... the street was... we were always... there were Polish children, Russian children, Ukrainian children. We didn't make a big deal out of it, we were all together. And on our... actually, in our house, where I used to live and Bohdan Stupka lived, there was an old, old, old Polish woman, she [told me] a lot of... She lived alone. She told me a lot of stories about how when the Poles were expelled from the city [in 1944-1946], she stayed behind. 'Where would I go? I don't want to,' and she stayed alone. She told me a lot of interesting things. Once I went outside, she was standing at the entrance, and somehow we... there were manholes in front of us. You know, manholes, like in Lviv. She told me, 'You know,' I [speak] Polish... it was the first language I learned, I had a Polish nanny, and she told me, this old lady, 'When the Germans were here, I was standing here at the entrance, and a little naked boy ran from there, completely naked, and he came to me and didn't know where to hide, so I opened the manhole and hid him there.' Then the Germans came running and asked her, 'Didn't a boy like this run through here?' She said, 'Yes, he did, and he went that way,' and she pointed with her hand. They ran there, and then she waited for about ten minutes, opened the manhole... It was terrible... and the boy had been eaten by rats, chewed up. These were the things she told me. That's how the Holocaust reached me."

"They saw impoverished people everywhere [in the eastern parts of the Soviet Union], and here in Lviv it was like living abroad. First of all, there were goods in stores here, in all the other cities [of the Soviet Union] there was no such thing. There were goods here, clothes, people dressed nicely, and there was a different atmosphere. It suited my parents very well, especially my father, who was used to it, and my mother was just surprised and stunned to see such a city during the war! I mean, the war had just ended. We didn't have a lot of shelling in Lviv, but I saw, even when I was little, when we were walking with my father, I saw holes in the walls, holes, and I asked, 'What is this?' He said, 'These are shots, these are bullet holes.' That is, there was shooting here, bombing... There used to be a hundred synagogues in Lviv, a hundred. The Tempel [synagogue of the] Progressive Judaism [community] was destroyed completely, and the Golden Rose was burned down completely. When they [my parents] arrived in Lviv, there was no... well, Soviet rule, no synagogues and no churches, as if there was nothing. But there was one synagogue on [Vuhilna] Street, and one on what is now [Brativ] Mykhnovskykh [Street]. The one on Vuhilna Street was turned into a warehouse, and something was done to the one on Mikhnovskykh Street too. It was forbidden to go to synagogues and to have synagogues, that's it. So they all had to hide, the Greek Catholics hiding with their faith, the Jews with theirs. My father used to get matzah somewhere on Easter, on Passover, Pesach in the Jewish language, there were some secret workshops that made matzah, and my father would bring it, I remember, but it was very dangerous, you see. So Lviv was an interesting city, and then I was born, and I've lived here all my life, but my son was in Israel. I ask myself all the time, 'Why am I not in Israel, not by my son's side?' But I cannot tear myself away from that city, from everything, from those gray walls. I just go there for about a month, now, I stayed longer during the war, and I feel that I can't just live there, I'm being drawn [back], it's my home, it's just my home. That's how I... Many of my friends say, 'You're some kind of not quite normal woman, you can go wherever you want, but you don't.' No, I do not."