Tag #148646 - Interview #95166 (Semyon Vilenskiy)

In Moscow I returned to my former apartment, but when I got married, I moved in with my wife. She lived in an old apartment building for professors. It was a communal apartment, but we had 4 rooms and it was in the center of Moscow. My wife Raisa Gordon was a Jew. She was born in 1924. There were 4 generations of doctors in her family. She was a doctor, too. Her great grandfather and grandfather were doctors in the czarist army. They studied in Berlin. Her father, professor Gordon, was chief of the therapeutic department of the clinic of therapeutic food. My wife kept her surname of hereditary doctors. Her father was not arrested during the ‘doctors’ plot’ [Doctors’ Plot] period. When the people arrested under this conviction were released, they came to see him. He supported their families giving them money and treated their children. He told me why he was not arrested. Director of the Institute of Food invited him to her office and said: ‘Osip Lvovich, there is nothing I can do to help you. You will be arrested, but you will be the last one, if it happens’. However, Stalin died before they arrested him. Vovsi, Rappoport, all other doctors convicted under this case were his friends. Osip Gordon was a very thorough and nice person. My wife was a kidney doctor.