Sometimes pictures are like a window into another world. In the case of Mikhail Tkach, the drawings and paintings hanging on the walls of the cozy living room are links to his old life. “This is Riga,” says the 84-year-old, pointing to the image of a historic castle complex, with Vilnius next to it. Mikhail Tkach once worked as an engineer. He has traveled a lot in his life. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, times became increasingly difficult. He finally came to Germany with his wife in 2001.
Michail Tkach was born in 1938 in a shtetl in northern Ukraine. Most of his family lived there in Narodichi. Parents, grandparents, numerous uncles and aunts, cousins. The family was Jewish. Like then about half of the total population of the place. In the 1920s there were three synagogues.
In 1939 there were 1,233 Jews in Narodichi, in 1941 there were none
In the year of his birth, Tkach’s mother was enrolled as a student at Kyiv University, later she graduated as a teacher of chemistry and biology. A year later his father was drafted into the military. As an officer. When the war situation worsened, his mother seized the opportunity and fled to Central Asia with her little boy and her parents. To Tajikistan. They stayed until Mikhail was about six years old.
In 1939, the Jewish population of the Ukrainian town of Narodichi was around 1,233, slightly less than half of all residents. Less than two years later, when German troops occupied the city on August 22, 1941, the Jewish population was wiped out. There were two – possibly three – massacres.
When my father returned home in 1944, all of his relatives were gone.
Mikhail Tkachformer chairman of the Jewish community in Potsdam
Mikhail Tkach’s paternal grandparents and other relatives had returned to Narodichi after a brief period of flight. They didn’t think anything would happen to them. “After the war we learned that all the relatives who had returned had been shot by the Germans,” says Tkach. “My grandmother was dead, her two daughters and her son.” Only his father’s father initially survived because he was a carpenter. “He was supposed to help build a church.” When he was finished, he too – like all construction workers – was shot by the National Socialists in 1943.
“When my father returned home in 1944, all the relatives were gone,” says Tkach. What can he remember? “I have a few images in my head.” Scraps of memory, scenes. His maternal grandfather died in exile. “He was a very religious person,” says Tkach. He lived with his grandmother in the room next door. Everyone went to the cemetery, only he had to stay behind alone. A feeling he remembers to this day.
Our synagogue was broken, the house of the grandparents murdered by the Nazis was gone.
Mikhail Tkach
When he finally returned to Narodichi with his mother and grandmother, everything was gone. “Our synagogue was broken, the house of the paternal grandparents who were murdered by the National Socialists was also gone.” At some point the family moved to Owrutsch, not far from the old place of residence, where his father found a job as a civil engineer. Mikhail, who once received a silver medal for his good grades in school, later became an engineer. His mother worked for a time in the school office.
Jewish traditions were kept within the family as much as possible. Professionally, he was very lucky. Thanks to his expertise in metrology, in device technology, he was in contact with specialists and companies abroad in the company for which he worked as a senior engineer in Kyiv. Also to Germans. “We were in East Germany for the first time as early as 1970,” he recalls. In 1987 his mother and sister moved to Berlin, where the sister was able to work as a dentist. “The Wall fell just two years after they arrived.”
New opportunities through immigration
Tkach himself was chairman of the Jewish Community of the City of Potsdam eV for eight years. What was it like for him, as a Jew, to follow the Jewish traditions in Potsdam? “It’s a different world,” says Mikhail Tkach. “A completely different community than before the Second World War.” At that time, it was mostly wealthy Jews who shaped the city. They were deported, only a few survived the Holocaust. “Today it’s a young Jewish community made up mainly of people who have immigrated from Eastern Europe,” which brings with it other challenges. But also new opportunities.
Everyone was happy about the construction of the new synagogue. Tkach says they could create a new self-image – both for the approximately 500 members of the Jewish community in Potsdam and for the non-Jewish people of Potsdam, who are gaining a new landmark in the heart of the historic center.
On today’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, Tkach will lay a wreath at Willi-Frohwein-Platz, very close to his home – together with Valentina Ivanidze, head of the Jewish youth club “Lifroach”. That so many young Jews live in the city is comforting, especially on this day.
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