Tag #153347 - Interview #94200 (Semyon Levbarg )

When the period of state anti-Semitism began in 1948 and Jews were accused of all deadly sins, beginning from cosmopolitism [16] and ending with the ‘doctors’ plot’ [17] when Jewish doctors were accused of poisoning the Party leaders it actually didn’t have any impact on me. I hated to read in newspapers or hear on the radio threats addressed to ‘rootless cosmopolites’ or ‘doctors poisoners’ where there were only Jewish names involved, but this all seemed to be happening somewhere far away, in Moscow, in high echelons of the power. It had no impact on my acquaintances either. Of course, I didn’t believe what newspapers wrote, but I was afraid to even acknowledge that it could occur to me. I still believed that everything happening in our country was just and that there was some overdoing, but it was impossible to build communism without them.