Selected text
Our house was ruined. My father demobilized and we rented a 10- square meter room where we lived with Aunt Genia, whose husband perished at the front, and her daughter. My father went back to work at the bookstore and my mother became a secretary of the party organization in a hospital. I went to the 4th grade at school. I studied well and was an active pioneer and Komsomol member. I attended all kinds of clubs at school: singing, dancing, drawing, and poem clubs. I studied at a school for girls. There were girls of various nationalities at school. I didn't face any anti-Semitism at school, although I saw more than just one abusive graffiti reading 'zhyd' [kike] on the walls and doors. Life was hard after the war. There was another period of famine.
In 1948, during the anti-Semitic state campaign against 'cosmopolitans' [18], my father was accused of theft, arrested and imprisoned. Life became even more difficult. My mother made cereals or boiled potatoes and took some food to my father in prison. She kept crying, knowing that he would share this food, which was so hard to get, with other inmates of his cell. My father was released in 1950. He never spoke about his time in prison. It seemed that he had forgotten about it and lived his life as if it had never happened. Perhaps, he had some discussions with my mother, but it never happened in my presence. I didn't dare to ask him about something that must have been painful for him to recall.
My father couldn't get a job because nobody wanted to employ an ex- prisoner, so he went to Ternopol where he got occasional jobs. He returned to Chernigov some time before I finished school in 1952. My father resumed his job in the bookstore, but he was fired again. Then he got employed again. This happened a few times. They didn't explain why they were firing him, but it was clear that they did it because he was a Jew. They employed him when they couldn't do without him and then they fired him again. This went on until 1956. Afterwards my father worked with a bookselling company until he retired. My mother worked as the director of a nursery school, then she worked in a hospital and in a scientific research institute. She held administrative positions and was always a secretary of party organizations.
In 1948, during the anti-Semitic state campaign against 'cosmopolitans' [18], my father was accused of theft, arrested and imprisoned. Life became even more difficult. My mother made cereals or boiled potatoes and took some food to my father in prison. She kept crying, knowing that he would share this food, which was so hard to get, with other inmates of his cell. My father was released in 1950. He never spoke about his time in prison. It seemed that he had forgotten about it and lived his life as if it had never happened. Perhaps, he had some discussions with my mother, but it never happened in my presence. I didn't dare to ask him about something that must have been painful for him to recall.
My father couldn't get a job because nobody wanted to employ an ex- prisoner, so he went to Ternopol where he got occasional jobs. He returned to Chernigov some time before I finished school in 1952. My father resumed his job in the bookstore, but he was fired again. Then he got employed again. This happened a few times. They didn't explain why they were firing him, but it was clear that they did it because he was a Jew. They employed him when they couldn't do without him and then they fired him again. This went on until 1956. Afterwards my father worked with a bookselling company until he retired. My mother worked as the director of a nursery school, then she worked in a hospital and in a scientific research institute. She held administrative positions and was always a secretary of party organizations.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
lina mukhamedjanova