Diana Shklyarov
Diana Shklyarov was born in Leningrad. Her father was a retired army officer and her mother an accountant. Neither parent had much interest in Judaism other than an affection for various Jewish dishes. Diana did not experience antisemitism until she tried to enroll at a prestigious university. Although she met all of the school’s admission requirements, she was turned away because she was a Jew. That incident was a turning point for her and her parents. Not long after she married, she, her husband, and their child decided to emigrate. It would take eight years before permission was finally granted. In 1988, the family left Leningrad for Boston via Vienna, Austria. Her mother and sister came a few years later. Shklyarov was a member of Temple Israel and worked there as a volunteer. Diana passed away in March 2021.
Diana Shklyarov talks about how she wanted to leave the USSR very early on in the Soviet Jewry movement and how a conversation with an artist in Lithuania in the early 1970s got her thinking about leaving the country with her family. Diana talks about what it was like when her family was denied an exit visa for the first time in 1980 and how they kept up their spirits after being denied permission to leave in subsequent years. She describes her experience of learning that she and her family had been granted exit visas while on vacation in Estonia. Ms. Shklyarov reflects on her sense of Jewish identity as a Jewish student in elementary and high school. She was denied admission to a prestigious Leningrad university even though she met all of the admission qualifications. This was her first experience with antisemitism. Diana talks about how most of her Jewish knowledge growing up was associated with foods eaten on Jewish holidays such as Chanukah gelt, matzo and gefilte fish. She recounts the annual Simhat Torah celebration at the Beit Yakov synagogue in Leningrad. Diana and her husband Isaak did not raise their daughter with many rituals, though they still had a strong Jewish identity as a family. She passed on Jewish identity to her daughter through Jewish foods. Diana describes how she consoled her daughter Inna when Inna was the target of antisemitism in school. Both the library where Diana worked and the company where her husband worked had many Jewish employees. Diana talks about arriving in the United States for the first time and how she fell in love with Boston. She describes the language barrier she and her family faced when they arrived in the United States and the help her husband’s family and Temple Israel congregants provided her family during their early years in Boston. Diana talks about her mother and sister’s transition to the United States and why she doesn’t miss the USSR. Finally, Ms. Shklyarov reflects on what it means to have a strong Jewish identity now in the United States.
