Tag #124631 - Interview #87368 (Miriam Bercovici )

Apart from the year 1961, when I was laid off from university education, I had no problems; I was appreciated as a professional. After my mother died, I specialized in pediatric oncology, and I published my PhD thesis on the same subject at the Publishing House of the Academy. But I never missed the opportunity to warn my foreign students, especially since most of them were Arabs then, or even the professor, that I wouldn’t tolerate any Jewish jokes, not even harmless ones. I never started a course without telling my students I was Jewish and had to endure years of deportation, and could thus make some grammar mistakes. I suffered immensely and I was extremely concerned about the mistakes I made, because I had to think of a word before I could say it. When I came back from deportation there was a mixture of languages in my head: there, people had talked in Ukrainian, Russian, Yiddish, German, Romanian, so I forgot everything I had known.