The Fate of the Levin Family

Now let’s come back to Altai Territory.

Some families of special settlers received permission to move from Soloneshensky District to other places of exile. Leah Levin and her children Sarah and Mulya remained living in the same village where they had been originally brought from Lithuania. After some time, in the spring of 1942, they moved to a big vacant house not far away from the central farmstead of the Karpov Sovkhoz. Leah worked, Sarah and Mulya learned Russian. The children were growing up and helped their mother around the house. All children, including locals, had only primitive toys such as rag balls. Their games and activities were very limited: swimming in the summer, skiing on homemade skis made from pieces of board in the winter, a hide-and-seek game, lapta (a Russian ball game, similar to baseball), and a catch-up game. Sarah loved reading books, but it was very difficult to get them.

Leah regularly sent parcels of food for her husband in the camp of Kraslag although her children did not always eat enough to fill them up. Sarah told me how she and her friend dreamed about boiling a bucket-sized pot of young potatoes and eating a whole meal, just both of them. The parcels helped Shmerl Levin to survive. He was in Stalin’s camp in horrible living conditions. Sometimes Shmerl worked with criminal prisoners with whom he did not always have normal relations, to put it mildly.

The war ended. An amnesty granted in honor of the Victory in the War reduced Shmerl’s prison term, but only by a little. He was released from the camp of Kraslag at the end of 1945, but he was not allowed to leave Krasnoyarsk Territory. He started working as a non-prisoner in one of the enterprises of the Kraslag system. In 1946 he received permission to return to Lithuania, to live anywhere but the capital.

Before returning to Lithuania Shmerl secretly went to Biysk. His family also came there from Soloneshensky District just to see their husband and father. The Levins were all together only for a few days, because of fear that Shmerl might be obliged to register as a special settler at the local NKVD commandant’s office. Such registration might prevent him from returning to Lithuania too. When Shmerl came to Lithuania he managed to settle in Vilnius, got a passport and even a residence permit for living in the capital of the Republic.

In 1948, Leah Levin and her children abandoned the place of exile and came to Shmerl without permission from the authorities that kept the special settlements under close surveillance and maintained a strict regimen over the special settlers. After a few years of living in Vilnius the Levins put life in order. Sarah was studying at the Moscow Institute of Culture, Department of Library Sciences.

However, in 1952, the Levins were deported a second time from Lithuania again to Soloneshensky District as runaways from exile. It was done by demand of the authorities of the special commandant’s office of MVD of Altai Territory. Despite the fact that Shmerl had official permission to live in Lithuania, he was deported along with his family.

Sarah Levin was in her last year of study at the Moscow Institute of Culture. She was prohibited from graduating and was conveyed by train from Moscow to her parents at their place of exile under convoy in a sleeping car in February 1953.

The Levins were again registered at the special commandant’s office of MVD at arrival.

Sarah was allowed to return to Moscow to finish her studies only in 1954, one year after death of Stalin. She successfully passed the state exit examination and received a diploma in librarianship from the Moscow Institute of Culture.

Before return to her parents she managed to obtain cancellation of her status as a "socially dangerous element" and her name was removed from the special registration list of the KGB (the Committee of State Security) of the USSR Council of Ministers.

The special registration for all people deported from Lithuania in June 1941 was canceled in 1956. It allowed them to go back to where they were deported from, or move to other places of the country, excluding capitals and closed cities (cities with sensitive military or nuclear industries, and border cities). They were allowed to get passports, and their basic civil rights were formally returned to them.

Let’s go back to 1954.

The Levins got permission to move to the city of Biysk that year, and afterward they changed their lodgings to the city of Barnaul, the administrative center of Altai Territory.

Sarah Levin made the acquaintance of her future husband Ehiel Zilberman in the city of Biysk. He secretly went to Biysk to see his family who had already settled in that city by that time. The Zilberman family originally was deported from the city of Siauliai to Onguday Aimak (settlement) in Gorno-Altai Autonomous Province of Altai Territory. Then they managed to get permission from the local special commandant’s office to move to Biysk.

That organ of the NKVD gave permission to Ehiel Zilberman to enter Tomsk Polytechnic Institute after graduating from school in 1945. He later transferred to Gorky Polytechnic Institute where he successfully completed his studies and became a chemist. After graduation, he was appointed to work at a chemical plant in the city of Dzershinsk in Gorky Province (now Nizhny Novgorod Province). Ehiel later worked at the scientific research institute where he carried out research in chemistry and published his scientific articles. He also received the advanced academic degree of "Candidate in Chemical Science" after defending his thesis.

Sarah Levin came to Dzershinsk to her fiancée and married him in 1955. When they lived apart from each other Sarah and Ehiel were in regular correspondence.

In 1970, Ehiel Zilberman began his teaching career at Gorky Polytechnic Institute and kept up his scientific research in chemistry at the same time. He successfully defended a doctoral thesis for the academic degree of "Doctor of Chemical Science," published his findings in monograph and other scientific articles. Ehiel achieved the academic status of professor.

Ehiel and Sarah have two children son Joseph and daughter Rina. They both became chemists like their father.

The Zilberman family, along with Leah Levin, repatriated to Israel in 1990. They settled in the city of Haifa. (Rina now lives in Kfar Saba.) Leah was happy that after two deportations to Siberian exile, she lived to see the land of Zion. Leah regretted that unfortunately her husband Shmerl had not lived to see that day. He passed away in 1979 after struggling with a serious illness. His health was undermined by the camps of Kraslag and the deportation to Siberia. Leah passed away in 2000.

Joseph and Rina pursued careers in their chosen professions. Joseph works for a research organization, and Rina works for a pharmaceutical company.

Ehiel and Sarah have three granddaughters and one grandson. Their grandson, shortly after his service in the Israel Defense Forces, entered Tel Aviv University. Their granddaughters are studying well at school. Grandmother and grandfather are happy with the progress being made by their grandchildren. They are also happy that they have left the country where they lived in the squalor of anti-Semitic surroundings and spent their childhood and youth in the hateful exile.

Throughout their lives, these honest and respectable people have overcome many hardships and challenges and always have been optimists. Their willpower, fortitude, persistence, talent, and outstanding ability to work helped them to achieve a lot in their life.

Ehiel and Sarah hope for a better future without fear for their children and grandchildren in freedom-loving Israel.