Project "Fate of family семьи"

Kheifets family members:

1. Kheifets Khatskel (Khache) Osherovich (birth year - about 1880) - my grandfather through the Isaac. Grandfather Khatzkel was a carpenter by profession. Before the war with his family lived in the city of Minsk, Byelorussian SSR on Komarovskaya street 61 ap.2 was shot along with his wife Dobka and two children teenage Fira and Michael in the Minsk ghetto.

3. Kheifets Isaac (Iche) Khatskelevich , date of birth - 08.20.1906 , Minsk . Memories of his brother Isaac - Seeds Heifetz : "Your father Kheifets Isaac Khatskelevich was born on 20/VIII-1906 in Minsk. Before 1926 Isaac helped Khatskel’s work as a carpenter and at the same time he studied at school. In September 1926 your father went to Leningrad to his close friend Yefim Proschitskiy , whom he knew from Minsk. Your father was preparing for admission to institute. In September 1927, Isaac successfully passed the entrance exam and was admitted in to LChTI on specialty 186 “A chemical engineer by gunpowder and explosives”.

Единственная групповая фотография семьи Хейфец от приблизительно 1927 года.

In the picture: row 1, stand - Sonia Kheifets (Sheynele) Khatskelevna grandmother - Kheifets Doba (Dobka) Abelevna (Maiden famitiya Dobkin), Kheifets Abram Khatskelevich.

It is from my personal memories. My father Isaac worked at a defense gunpowder factory in the village Morozovka near town Leningrad. When the World War II began his family did not evacuate from Minsk. His father Khatskel refused to evacuate his family from Minsk. My grandfather Khatskel said he fought with the Germans in World War I, was a prisoner of the Germans, and he knew that they would not touch anyone. But the Nazis came. And all those who remained in Minsk died in the Minsk ghetto.

From the words of my father Isaac in his family during the Second World War about 60 relatives were killed. When mother and father talked about father’s relatives in Minsk, the words were sounded about the death of some relatives of the father in the Minsk ghetto. Often I heard the family Tsirlin.

Father’s stories about the episode with the task of Staff of the Leningrad Front only added the memories of his brother Semion. Before the World War II, my father Isaac conducted research in the field of smokeless gunpowder creation from waste of their production of gunpowder factory, which was located in the village Morozovka in Leningrad Region. When the Germans surrounded the town Leningrad, in the Leningrad region began to act partisans which resisting to German army. The Germans used the railway infrastructure system at Leningrad for to transfer mobile military units between different attack directions on the city of Leningrad, to break through the defenses of the city. Leaders of Leningrad defense committee decided to hold a major sabotage operation by partisans on the conclusion of the railways system around the city. But there was a problem of a lack of explosives.

The task for gunpowder factory where my father worked as an industrial engineer was to find ways to fulfill an order for the production of explosives. And in this situation my father's research on the development of smokeless gunpowder and developed laboratory equipment were useful. In the winter, factory workers - their quantity was about ten people, knocked out of wood waste materials crowbars and these pieces then warmed in the production room for further laboratory production processing to produce explosive products. When the first party of explosives was produced a group of partisans came and brought the train rail and conducted test explosion. Rail was blown up and the partisans took the explosives. Job task was done and then a partisans operation to undermine the railways around Leningrad was conducted successfully.

After some time, my father was called to the Leningrad Party committee. In those years, call in the Regional Party Committee frightened many Communists. Visitor could enter with party membership card and leave without party card. My father Isaac was worried because in those days no one knew how it might end. But he was awarded the Order of the Red Star for mission-critical tasks, which quated to participate in hostilities. Then he learned that the director was awarded the Order of Lenin, and factory workers were awarded medals. List of awards was prepared by the factory director. And he identified himself Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Star for my farther. My father, as a devoted Communist, asked the factory director why he defined himself in the awarding list the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Star to me. The director said that the Order of the Red Star is a combat award for participation in hostilities. This answer explained everything.

When I was a teenager, I paid attention that my father Isaac always took a piece of bread. As he explained to me later that in the siege survived those, who ate small portions of bread at a certain time. This rule he had complied in the siege and lifetime. When once he saw how people left half-eaten bread in the dining room and then disposing it. He said that it could save several lives in the siege. Such jealous attitude to bread I saw other people who survived the siege.