Tag #141302 - Interview #103753 (Rahmil Shmushkevich Biography)

I worked a lot during the day and studied by correspondence at the Philology Faculty of Kiev University. Our family were sleeping in our single room and I studied in our small kitchen at night. I wanted our newspaper “Yuny Leninets” to be very popular among young people, I was its editor. I tried to publish interviews with the prominent people of our time. I met writers, actors, producers, pilots and state officials and wrote about them in the newspaper. In 1930s it became risky to meet with such people. You interviewed a commandant like Fakir Iona (a Jew) one day and on the following day he was declared an enemy of the people and one could pay with one’s freedom or even life for knowing him. But God was merciful. I was a member of Kiev Town Komsomol Committee, but I didn’t become a Party member until 1940.