Document for Ovsei Ginovker

Document for Ovsei Ginovker

This document was issued by the Supreme Court of the Estonian SSR in November 1961. It says that my brother Ovsei Ginovker's penalty writ of 1942 is reversed due to the absence of corpus delicti. However, Ovsei had to suffer a lot. When we were being deported, he found out that the head of the family would be sent to a reformatory camp, and other family members into deportation. Ovsei felt sorry for our old father and passed himself off as the head of the family. Since Ovsei looked very much like my father, the escorting soldiers didn't notice the trick. My father remained with us, but my brother went to the camp to fell trees. The conditions in the camp were absolutely inhuman: hunger, cold and hard work. Ovsei spent five years there, nearly died of pellagra, but stayed alive by a miracle. When Ovsei was released in 1946, he came to live with us in Kirov region. In 1947 he went to Tashkent where some friends of his lived. Once there, he worked in an artel selling fruit. They shipped fresh and dried fruit by air to large cities in USSR. Ovsei made good money and helped us financially, which was necessary. In 1953, Ovsei was once again deported to Kirov. He worked as an engineer in a planning institution in Kirov. After he was released from deportation in 1958, he filed an application to move to Israel. It was refused. Then Ovsei went to Lithuania with the idea that he could obtain the permission more easily from there. It didn't work out. He repeated the procedure a number of times, and every time it was refused. Ovsei returned to Tallinn in 1968 and filed yet another application. This time he requested to go to Israel to visit Inna, Samson's ex-wife. The reply came unexpectedly quick, 'You cannot go to visit, however, you can leave for good.' He was allowed one week to pack and leave. I went to see Ovsei off in Moscow airport. Before he boarded the plane, he was thoroughly searched and not allowed to take this document to Israel so it remained in my possession.
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