A Veteran of the Great Patriotic War, Born in Tel Aviv

On October 23, 1926, in Tel Aviv, an important event took place in the family of young repatriates Leah and David Fish: a son was born to them. The little sabra was named Yechiel, and he might have become a fighter for the creation of a Jewish state, and later a citizen of independent Israel, if not for one circumstance: his parents, who had once come to Palestine from Poland, were convinced communists. And this created numerous problems for them.

Communists opposed the creation of a mono-national state—they believed that Jews and Arabs should fight together against the British colonialists and build socialism in their country. Therefore, their relations with the Zionist parties were very complicated. In 1924, the communist faction was expelled from the Histadrut (the Zionist trade union that advocated for “Jewish labor”). However, the Arabs, whose interests the Communist Party sought to defend, were also hostile toward it. The patriarchal Arab society was not at all attracted by the ideas of abolishing private property and establishing full equality between men and women. And the British administration governing Palestine had no intention of passively observing how the communists were preparing to expel the colonialists from the Middle East.

But it was not only the communists—all repatriates had a hard time in those years. There were not enough jobs for everyone, nor enough housing, and, in addition, Jews constantly had to fend off attacks by Arabs. In August 1929 alone, 133 people were killed as a result of pogroms that swept across Palestine. It was at this time that Leah and David Fish finally became disillusioned with the idea of building communism in the land of their ancestors. They decided to join the Jewish workers who were realizing this dream in the Soviet Union. In 1930, Leah, David, and little Yechiel—whom they called Khilik at home—arrived in Moscow.

Jewish communists in the Soviet Union could feel relatively comfortable. The active struggle against “religious prejudices” continued here, and former synagogues were converted into clubs, libraries, and shops. Hebrew was, in fact, effectively banned, but newspapers and journals were published in Yiddish, plays were staged, and departments for the study of Jewish folklore were established at universities. Meanwhile, OZET—the Society for the Settlement of Jewish Toilers—created agricultural settlements in Crimea and other regions of Ukraine, in Belarus, and in the Far East. On August 20, 1930, the Central Executive Committee of the RSFSR adopted a resolution “On the Establishment of the Biro-Bidzhan National District within the Far Eastern Territory.”

Jewish enthusiasts began to move to Birobidzhan, believing that the Third Temple should be built not in the Middle East but in the Far East. People came not only from the republics of the USSR, but also from abroad—from Romania, Poland, Lithuania, the United States, and Argentina. Among the settlers were also Jews who had already spent several years in Eretz Israel, including David and Leah Fish with little Khilik.

However, the enthusiasm of the newcomers faded rather quickly. Due to difficult living conditions and the harsh climate, more than half of the Jews who had arrived in Birobidzhan in 1928–33—11,450 out of 19,365—left the Far East. Khilik’s parents also returned to Moscow. They settled in a workers’ barrack in Luzhniki, and David got a job as a foreman mechanic at the “Ball Bearing” factory. Leah began working at Metrostroi. Seven-year-old Khilik started first grade already in the Soviet capital.

Most of the Jews who remained in Birobidzhan met a terrible fate. In 1936, a wave of repressions descended upon them. It was the immigrants and returnees who suffered the most—they were charged with espionage. Of the 311 delegates to the First Congress of Soviets of the Jewish Autonomous Region, 116 were executed and 175 were sent to labor camps.

But those who had left the Far East paid no less a bloody price. The brutal repressions did not spare the Fish family either. On January 4, 1938, David was arrested and charged with espionage. On May 9, 1938, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced him to death. On the same day, David Fish was executed.

At the moment of her husband’s arrest, Leah was pregnant again. Valerian was born after his father was gone. Khilik, who was only 12 at the time, took his younger brother under his care. He always tried, as best he could, to replace the innocent father who had been killed and to help his mother, who was left alone.

After completing seven-year school, in 1940 Khilik enrolled in a vocational school in order to obtain a profession as quickly as possible and start working. But he had barely finished his first year when the war began. Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union. On the night of July 22, 1941, the Luftwaffe carried out its first air raid on Moscow. On the same day, a local air defense system was established in the city. Thousands of volunteers took part in the defense of Moscow, standing watch at factories and on the roofs of residential buildings to prevent fires: during the raids on the Soviet capital, thousands of incendiary bombs were dropped.

These munitions had a terrifying feature: although in the first moments after impact they were almost harmless, after 1–2 minutes a powerful flame would erupt in the affected area. This posed a huge danger—in the early 1940s, many wooden houses still remained in Moscow.

Khilik Fish also enlisted in one of the units defending the city from air raids. Together with his comrades, he grabbed the “incendiaries” that had fallen onto rooftops with long tongs and tried to drop them as quickly as possible into a barrel of water or cover them with sand. As a last resort, an incendiary bomb could be thrown from the roof onto the ground—there, too, volunteers were on duty. During the air raids on Moscow, which continued until January 1942, about 45,000 fires broke out in the city, of which 43,500 were extinguished in time. Volunteers made a huge contribution to fighting the “incendiaries,” and many of them were teenagers—for example, Khilik was only 15 at the time.

Standing watch on the rooftops was extremely dangerous—besides incendiary bombs, the Germans also dropped conventional high-explosive bombs on the city. In addition, even the slightest delay in extinguishing an “incendiary” posed a serious danger to a volunteer. During one of his shifts, Khilik suffered a severe burn—he carried a scar on his back for the rest of his life as a reminder. In total, 1,235 people were killed in the bombing of Moscow, and more than 5,000 were wounded.