Ethel Keuer, a short introduction about her life in Pittsford, Webster, and getting kicked out of Sunset House.
Our condolences to her children on her recent passing.
Author Archives: TALKBACK4Teens
Life Stories Archive – Helen Rice
Helen turned 101 this year. She talks about her life growing up on the farm outside of a small city in upstate New York, the school teacher living with them, the chores on the farm, her father and mother, the dressmaker, the teen years and dichotomy between the city girls and the country girls, becoming a teacher then a school librarian, then the first woman deputy superintendent of school curriculum in Irondequoit.
LIFE STORIES Archive: Topper-Pylyshenko #2
Irma continues about Die Flucht as a child, the defeat of Germany and life in the Russian zone and then the American zone, the years after and her father’s death, but then seemingly miraculous returns of her aunt and grandfather who both had been thought killed in the war, and then coming to the U.S. Her life in the U.S., working at Jewish centers, her dance and teaching career, marriage and family. Irma describes photographs of her family from 1910 to present.
LIFE STORIES Archive Topper-Pylyshenko
Topper-Pylyshenko, Irma
Irma talks about Die Flucht. She was 6 years old when her family along with millions of other German families fled in cattle cars from Poland near Gdansk/Danzig to the interior of Germany. Her family narrowly escapes the fire bombing of Dresden and the bombing of Leipzig. 14 Million German refugees. She tells a little about her life in Poland before WWII and how her family came to be relocated there. She tells about fleeing the Soviets, being bombed and strafed by the British, living in the Russian Zone and escaping into the American Zone, and eventually coming to the U.S.
Irma talks about Die Flucht. She was 6 years old when her family along with millions of other German families fled in cattle cars from Poland near Gdansk/Danzig to the interior of Germany. Her family narrowly escapes the fire bombing of Dresden and the bombing of Leipzig. 14 Million German refugees. She tells a little about her life in Poland before WWII and how her family came to be relocated there. She tells about fleeing the Soviets, being bombed and strafed by the British, living in the Russian Zone and escaping into the American Zone, and eventually coming to the U.S.
LIFE STORIES Archive Pylyshenko 3
Mirko talks more about his expressionist art, teaching, human rights activism, charitable fund raising, traveling to Ukrainian Soviet Union and Moscow during the last years of the Cold War. His Ukrainian Rochester Collection is moved from Brockport University to a permanent home at the University of Rochester. He retires as president of the Ukrainian Federal Credit Union. He starts his Ukrainian Library. He talks more about the 1964 race riots in NY. His first marriage and divorce. Eastern European celebrities entertaining and entertained at the Pylyshenko farm.
LIFE STORIES Archive Smalley
LIFE STORIES Archive Emma Smalley
Miss Emma talks about her life in Georgia and then in Florida, the tragic death of her father when she was very young, asthma, her very young brother’s tapeworms, school in Georgia, her marriage at age 17, alcoholic husband, divorce, moving to New York, and the race riots in Rochester NY.
LIFE STORIES Archive Pylyshenko 2
Life Stories Archive
Pylyshenko, Wolodymyr “Mirko” #2
The second documentary of Mirko Pylyshenko. He talks about coming to the U.S. at age 15, what the Ukrainian community in New York was like, his first jobs, lifeguarding, his art, teaching, human rights activism and traveling to the Ukraine each year during the Cold War and then during Glasnost and after the fall of the Soviet Union. Many artists of all types from the Ukraine and the Eastern Block countries during the Cold War visited his farm. Also the president of the newly independent country of Ukraine in the early nineties visited. He talks about his difficulties with both the KGB and the CIA & FBI, once having to flee into Finland from Ukraine. With Glasnost and then the fall of the Soviet Union, he becomes recognized for his human rights efforts by both the outgoing president Carter and incoming president Reagan.
LIFE STORIES Archive Neuberg
Fay talks about her young years in Poland, fleeing the Nazis by crossing the border into the Soviet Union, her father ends up in a Siberian labor camp and she and her brother are separated from their mother when American planes bomb the train cars; after being stuffed into train cars, they are thrown from the window to save their lives. On the streets in Kazakhstan, nine year old Fay is arrested for selling cigarettes for food. She and her brother are tortured in the orphanage because they are Jews. After being reunited with her mother, they move back to Poland after WWII where Jews are being persecuted and murdered by the Polish state. They come to the United States. Later her father is released from Siberia after Stalin’s death and he comes to the United States, continuing his writing and becoming a celebrated Yiddish writer. Pastor Orgazaly reads excerpts from “My Yesterdays,” titled, “He was ashamed to be naked” and “Someday when you see my wife.”
LIFE STORIES Archive Pylyshenko Ukraine, WWII
Pylyshenko, Wolodymyr “Mirko”
He talks about life in the Ukraine under Poland, then the Soviet Union, then the Nazis before and during WWII. He describes his parents and their family backgrounds, fleeing the Soviets, being sent off alone by his parents at age eleven, then being reunited with his parents. His brother lives and dies in Siberia without any contact with his family. Mirko talks about life in the Displaced Persons Camps in Germany, the Boy Scouts, YMCA, and Sea Scouts, then leaving for America at age 15.
This is a blog where generations can interact. LSA is a show where the stories can be saved for the generations of your family, for the community, and for the world. Before they are lost forever. Do you have a story we should hear?
LIFE STORIES Archive conceptualized
Episodes of Life Stories Archive will begin appearing here soon. The show airs on Public Access Television in New York: television that means something. The concept was simple. Young people don’t have many role models. For many reasons, parents, uncles, aunts and grandparents, neighbors and other folks in the community don’t serve like they used to. Yet our senior citizens have led fascinating lives, with stories that no one hears, and that will soon be lost to their families, their communities, and the world. With the help of my trusty cameraman, I began filming the life stories of senior citizens found through various organizations, civic groups, newspaper articles, recommendations from friends, people contacting me to suggest a subject person and just by being my, sometimes, gregarious self whenever not feeling like a hermit. My thought is simple, their great great grandchildren will never know them, but they will be able to hear their voice, see their face and their expressions, hear their stories as if firsthand. I think that is invaluable for their family’s generations, and also for their community and also for the world, for anyone who stops to listen. I hope you will agree. Do you have a story we should hear? leave a comment here, start a thread, contact me at lifestoriesarchive@aol.com
Give Peace Another Chance
LIFE STORIES Archive 