Chaim and Rebekka Breido with friends
On January 15th, 1931 the workshop was shut down, father was accused of using hired labor, regardless of the fact that members of the cooperative received a certain share payment [a share is a part of the investment of the investor's ownership].
At the end of the year the profit was distributed between all of them; besides, father and his brothers worked from early morning till late at night. But no one was interested in this.
They were "bourgeois" for the authorities and they were to be "dispossessed" as kulaks. Grandfather as an old man was exiled to Novgorod, to the "101th kilometer" , he was deprived of his rights for 3 years.
The brothers were exiled to other cities without incapacitation. Father was arrested as the principal, put into the famous Leningrad "Kresty" prison and later transferred to "Butyrka" [Butyrskaya Prison in Moscow].
Someone informed mother about the time when father was to be transferred and together with us children she went to look at him. The train was surrounded with soldiers and dogs, it was impossible to talk to father, we could only see him.
When we came home, our neighbor, a Jew, came to us, brought a picture of his wife and our little Ada, and tore it to pieces in front of us. Thus we became a family of an "enemy-bourgeois".
Grandmother and grandfather in Novgorod rented a room there in the house of the Belenky family, who were kantonists [Jewish children to whom the recruitment rule was applied], I still remember their Novgorod accent.
The Belenky family was also Jewish, however, being kantonists and baptized, they had more civil rights.
My grandparents returned to Leningrad in 1939. I met them when they were people of pension age. Grandfather, as well as his father, wore a moustache and a beard and a skullca.
Grandmother did not wear a headscarf as many Jewish women, but remained bareheaded. Grandfather was sick most of the time and did not visit the chemical workshop any more, he handed over all knowledge to my father though they had to seek advice from him regarding formulas, especially when new compositions were invented.
First lower row, from left to right: my paternal grandfather Khaim and grandmother Riva, she was also my maternal grandmother's sister. I am standing behind their backs in the second lower row, third from left.
Picture was made near the house where grandparents rented a room, when they were exiled to Novgorod as kulaks, owners of a workshop. They are 64 here and I am 10. Other people in the picture are the Belenky family, owners of the house, kantonists, baptized Jews.