On June 18 in the Jewish Community Center Rimmon a meeting with Grigoriy Umanov, Professor, Doctor of Education Science took place. Grigoriy Abramovich is a special person for the community. He was among the founding fathers of the community, enthusiasts who decided that Almaty Jews will have their common home.

It was raining hard outside but it was warm and nice in the Community Center. Those who came at the meeting in spite of the bad weather were glad that they could make it. There were many young people in the audience as they are always interested in bright personalities who could show them the way to self fulfillment and success.

The event was opened by Inessa Chugainova, Director of Hesed Polina, "We start a series of meetings with people who have achieved success and who identify themselves as Jews. These meetings are designed for the youth but I think they would be interesting for all generations."

Grigoriy Abramovich told the audience about himself, "I am 79. I was born in Moscow, on Arbat. My father was a military man and we accompanied him to Paltava where he served in the Army. One day in June 1941, he went to his work and straight to the war front from the office. He called my mother and said, "Don’t worry. We will see each other again soon. Everything will be over in a month." My first impressions of the war were full of joy. A 10-year-old boy could run around the city to collect splinters of arms, no more classes of hated violin. Fascists were moving further into the country. The land lady who leased the apartment to the Umanovs said, "Soon the real hosts will come and everything will get back to normal. It will be bad only for the Jews and Bolsheviks." My mother thought that we were both and decided that we had better leave." The family went to Uzbek Kokand where they were found by their father in 1944 who had been sent to Almaty for training. Grisha Umanov graduated from school, then from the History Department of University, and began to work… in a children’s penal colony with 1,500 of children convicts. Here he had a fateful meeting with an amazing woman, a teacher Raisa Grigoryevna Lemberg. Grirory Abramovich is still grateful to her for the right words said in the right time, "You need to write, young man!" And he was writing a dissertation in the evenings using materials of his work in the penal colony. In 1965, he defended the dissertation and started working in the Kazakh Pedagogic Institute named After Abay. At 38, he defended his doctorate dissertation. He was invited to work in Moscow but he did not want to leave his favorite Almaty. Later he worked in the U.S., Israel, Switzerland, France, and Japan and was always coming back to the city he loved.

The audience asked many questions showing the high interest. They also asked about his ethnical origin. "Are you proud to be a Jew?" "I am a Jew. I never was hiding that. But how can I be proud of what was given to me by God? I can be proud only of what I have done myself. I am proud of Israel. That’s amazing what has been done in the wild part of the world, what a great country was created! But there are such Jews that I won’t shake hands with. It is the personality that is important to me but not the ethnical origin. I do not speak Hebrew or Yiddish. I speak German, Kazakh, and a little of English. Kazakhstan is a unique country. Kazakhs are ethnical internationalists, they were nomads moving from the Urals to Hungary and were acquiring the cultural diversity. I was always lucky to meet good people of all different ethnical origins."

It was an interesting lively discussion. The audience asked for a telephone number of the school created by Umanov. Grigoriy Abramovich was also telling about the foundation of the first Jewish organization of Almaty. He thanked Alexander Baron, "He is not a politician, he is a talented medical doctor. Thanks to his efforts, there are many useful Hesed programs working, Davar Newspaper and books about Jews are being published." He answered the question how he manages to retain such a good physical form, "I do not do anything, only run five km every morning." At the end of the meeting, Grigory Abramovich gave his advice to the young people, "Try different professions. Many times in my life I started all over again from a scratch. It gave me strength and interest to move forward."

Lyudmila Starodubova