Tag #149160 - Interview #95820 (Tamara Koblik)

I was hysterical, when Stalin died in 1953. Of course, I thought of Stalin like the majority of our people at that time. Our father! Soldiers went into attacks with his name, and we won! In our family we didn’t know anything about what was happening in 1937 [Great Terror] [9]. My relatives were craftspeople, far from politics. I believed that what had happened to my father was a tragic mistake. On that day I was walking to school tear-stained, when I bumped into Yeva’s mother. She got so concerned about me. She came to our school and called Yeva: ‘What happened to Tamara?’ Yeva said: ‘Stalin died’. But I need to confess – there was something else that upset me so. According to the Jewish calendar, I was born on the eve of Purim. One time the Purim occurred on 6 March and since then the family had celebrated my birthday on 6 March. Stalin died on 5 March, and this day was announced as the day of the mourning in the country. And I started crying on the early morning of 6 March: ‘I am so miserable, I will never again have a birthday, and the mourning will never end in my life, terrible, it’s a nightmare!’ Mama showed me my birth-certificate which stated that I was born on 10 February. Since 1953 I’ve celebrated my birthday on 10 February.