Tag #153272 - Interview #94182 (Rachil Lemberg)

My sister and brothers studied at the Jewish 7-year school. I went to this same school in 1928. It was a common Soviet lower secondary school. We studied all subjects in Yiddish. I knew Yiddish since childhood. I studied well at school. I liked mathematic and physics. At school I was called Rusia and since then I was called with this affectionate name. I enjoyed studying at school. I attended a vocal club and took part in school concerts singing in a quartet. We sang folk songs in Yiddish and Russian. I became a young Octobrist 9 and then a pioneer at school. Our pioneer activities involved gathering of scrap metal and waste paper. There was competition between classes and those who gathered the biggest quantities gained the first place. Once a week we had political classes and pupils made reports about political events in the USSR and across the world.  We were raised with the conviction that the USSR was the best country in the world and that Soviet children were the happiest in the world and that we owed this to our leaders Lenin 10 and Stalin. We were even taught to say ‘Granfather Lenin’ and ‘Granfather Stalin’. There were their portraits in each classroom and this was a mandatory attribute of our life.