Tag #112797 - Interview #95345 (Alexander Tsvey)

Brother welcomed soviet regime and became its active sticklers. Joseph was an active Komsomol [4] member. He married a Jewish girl Sara, also Komsomol member. Joseph was a passionate orator, devoted to the ideas of the party and revolution. He was a political go-getter. In 1934 he became the secretary of the party committee of one of the largest plants in Moscow (I do not remember which one). Then he was assigned the secretary of the regional party committee and then later on the secretary of Kursk [about 450 km to the south from Moscow] municipal party committee. Joseph did very well before the outbreak of repressions [Great Terror] [5]. Then in 1938 there was a brief article in the paper «The Secretary of Kursk municipal party committee is mistaken», wherein Joseph was unfairly castigated. He went to Moscow to seek truth and did not come back. He was arrested and in 1938 shot without trial. We found about it only in the 1960s when we got his rehabilitation certificate [Rehabilitation in the Soviet Union] [6], but back in 1937 mother had been staying by walls of NKVD [7] days and nights and still did not manage to find anything about the brother. They even did not let her give him a parcel with the rusks and tobacco.