Tag #148986 - Interview #78220 (theodore magder)

For some time there were no demonstrations of anti-Semitism; even in the early 1950s, during the burst of anti-Semitism on a state level, we only knew about the Doctors' Plot [25] from newspapers. I never concealed my nationality. When I received my first postwar Soviet passport I thought about my nationality. The officer at the passport department was struck when he heard my question regarding the procedure in choosing the nationality. He said it wasn't based on religiosity, since we were atheists, or racial, since we were not racists, but it might be that the mother tongue determined the nationality. And I said, 'Then write 'Jew', please', knowing that my mother tongue was Romanian, though.