Mendel Kreimer at a 1st May parade

This is me at the 1st May parade. This photo was taken in Kishinev in 1960. I always had a fair attitude to work and public errands and diligently attended parades. Parades in Kishinev took place in the main thoroughfare named after Lenin - called Alexandrovskaya [Regele Carol Street] during the Romanian rule. We got together at the plant, lined up and went to the square. Each enterprise knew where to join the parade to march along the main thoroughfare. We were always in a festive mood. I worked honestly, but honesty had no way in the Soviet Union. The director of the trust, Burlachenko, didn't like it when I fired the senior accountant of a commercial 'chaynaya' for breach of trust. He issued an order appointing me the senior accountant of this 'chaynaya'. I understood that there was nothing else to complain about. A few years later, I was transferred to Kishinev saw mill and received an apartment in a new two-storied building on Kuibyshev Street. I moved to Kishinev alone and later my first wife, Ludmila Zaitseva, obtained a certificate that I had a job in Kishinev. She needed it to resign from work at the maternity hospital. The next day I received a telegram from our neighbor in Beltsy: 'I've got the keys to your apartment. Your wife and son have left'. This came to me as a surprise. My wife and I never had any conflicts. I had a heart attack at work on hearing this, though I was a healthy man. Later, I found out that she had met a Russian man, quite a drunkard. This was an unexpected blow. I didn't think I deserved it. A year later I bumped into my prewar girlfriend Clara Stiglitz, who said that Enna Goldstein was also in Kishinev. I was very happy to hear this. I knew Enna well, her house, her upbringing and human qualities. We began to see each other When Gorbachev came to power and perestroika began, I accepted it with all my heart hoping for improvement and more democracy. I think Gorbachev made many mistakes. He had to remove Soviet forces from Germany, Poland and other countries, members of the Warsaw Pact under the condition that they undertook an obligation to enter any military block, NATO or others. The Soviet forces left barracks and houses in these countries. They should have built houses and barracks in the USSR so that the military had lodgings, when they returned. However, Yeltsin let us down the most. When the Presidents of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia discussed the independence of their countries in Bielovezhskaya Puscha [Belarus national park, where Yeltsin signed the break-up of the Soviet Union with the Ukraine and Belarus] in 1991, this was actually a coup since the population voted for the USSR at the referendum before. Yeltsin was to get a bullet in his forehead for this. One must call a spade a spade. This is my vision of those events.