Tag #149258 - Interview #78073 (sarra shpitalnik)

In 1940 the Jewish population of Kishinev increased significantly: many Bessarabians working in Romania returned to Bessarabia and many arrived from Transylvania [19]. We had to share our apartment with Jews from Transylvania. They spoke Hungarian and didn't know a word in Yiddish and my mother couldn't talk to them. Many Jews arrived from Russia [then USSR] and from Tiraspol, Odessa [today Ukraine]. We had no fear of the Soviet power: we were rather sympathetic. My father's acquaintances used to say a long time before this happened, 'Ours will be here soon,' and some tradesmen thought, 'when ours will come, we will become clerks in our stores.' However, my father got disappointed with the Soviet power pretty soon. He went to work in the Glavlessbyt timber sale office. When his new boss saw his new ball pen that Uncle Philip had sent him from Paris, he took it away saying, 'Is this a ball-point pen? It used to be yours, but now it is ours'. My father found this very strange.