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Above:
Martin Ryba at a
DP camp in 1947.
Cii,4;92
•
•-.
'Tr!,
+v.-
Middle:
Martin's mother and
father, Golda and
Aaron Feival, in their
engagement photo.
Bottom:
Martin as a child
with his family.
Directly behind
Martin are his
mother, Golda; a
cousin; and his
grandmother, Sarah.
In back row are his
Uncle Moshe, who
spent the war years
in the Soviet Union
with Golda and
Martin, and Uncle
Chaim, who
disappeared in
Poland.
was too frightening."
In the Yoffes' first years
in the Soviet Union, Ger-
many was clearly winning
the war. But by 1943, the
Soviets began to claim vic-
tory. The Yoffes moved to
Tashkent, Uzbekistan,
where Elkhonon became a
student at a metal workers'
school.
The family received a
small piece of earth to
farm. They planted
watermelons and can-
taloupes. "The soil was
fruitful but dry," Mr. Yoffe
recalled.
Often, Elkhonon stayed
up late to guard the pro-
du c e . He remembers
"sitting nights beside a
burning fire and watching
the cows that came to feed
on the sweet melons."
Sometimes he would hear
the nearby sound of a loud
"moo," only to look around
and see his laughing
father, famous for his abil-
ity to imitate animals.
In 1944, Riga was lib-
erated and the Yoffes
returned home. Elkhonon
became a carpenter, "but
my heart was with music."
He found work singing in
the evenings with the Riga
choir. At 16, he began at-
tending music school
where "I fell in love with
the xylophone."
Later, Mr. Yoffe studied
musicology and served as
principal timpanist for the
Riga State Symphony. He
stayed in the city until he
was 50, when he im-
migrated to the United
States with his wife, Lydia.
Mr. Yoffe was never able
to reclaim his first home in
Riga, from which his
parents fled that June
afternoon. And today he is
vehemently opposed to
communism and has few
kind words for the Soviet
Union. But he never
regrets his family's deCi-
sion to leave Latvia during
the war.
"The Jewish people who
didn't go — many of them
were my relatives — were
all killed in the Riga
ghetto," he said. "That was
such a fate.
"But we were lucky. God
opened the door for us."
E
lkhonon Yoffe was
one of hundreds of
thousands of Jews
who, in search of safety, fled
Nazi-occupied nations for
the Soviet Union.
Soviet authorities' at-
titudes toward these refu-
gees shifted dramatically
throughout the war, gen-
erally reflecting their
country's approach toward
Hitler. In 1939, after the
signing of the Molotov-
Ribbentrop Pact, Nazi
persecution of Jews was
downplayed in the Soviet
press, according to the late
Gregor Aronson, co-editor
of Russian Jewry: 1917-
1967. Yet the Soviets never
set up Jewish ghettos or
accepted racial laws.
"It was simply that Jews
stopped being spoken
about," Mr. Aronson
writes. "It was considered
`tactless' to mention the
word." Leading Soviet
Jewish figures, including
Lazar Kaganovich, head of
the NKVD (the KGB
predecessor), and Foreign
Minister Maxim Litvinov
were removed from their
posts or downplayed in the
press.
After the Nazis broke
their pact with the Soviets
in June 1940, Stalin united
his forces in opposition to
Hitler. The Soviet Union
became the leading oppo-
nent of the Nazis, and vir-
' tually every Soviet family
experienced the loss of at
least one son or father.
Before the end of the war,
more than 10 million
Soviet citizens would
perish.
Though individual
collaborators worked with
the Nazis to kill Soviet
Jews, the Soviet Union,
unlike other nations, never
surrendered its Jewish
population to the Nazis.
And during the war, Stalin
encouraged Jewish natives
to settle the so-called Jew-
ish region, Birobidzhan.
Throughout the war,
Stalin also welcomed Jew-
ish refugees — most of
them Polish — into the