Tag #148638 - Interview #95166 (Semyon Vilenskiy)

This was the period of desperate struggle of the new Soviet regime [21] with Ukrainian Bandera nationalists [22]. I felt myself a Jew particularly acutely in Lvov in 1946. At first I stayed in a hostel where my co-tenants were the Hutsul [native mountain Ukrainians, resided in Western Ukraine and Subcarpathia [23] students, most of them banderovtsy, from various towns of western Ukraine and Subcarpathia. One night I woke up and saw a Hutsul guy sitting beside me. He said he was watching me so that the others did not kill me. They hated Russians and believed them to be invaders, particularly those from Moscow, and Jews, who they thought kept the steering wheel of the Soviet power, particularly that I was a Komsomol member. There were only 5 Komsomol members in the University. It was not safe to stay in the hostel. One night banderovtsy hanged 1 Komsomol member at the stadium. I left the hostel, my co-student and I slept on the desks in the library for some time. Later we rented a room for three. There was brutal anti-Semitism that became common for few generations.