Tag #154187 - Interview #90538 (Ignac Neubauer)

My initial attitude to perestroika that started in the late 1980s was the same as to everything else in the USSR – indifferent, but a short time later I realized that I was wrong. Gorbachev 21 truly wanted a democratic society with freedom of speech and press. Gorbachev allowed private businesses, though there were those who didn’t like it. Many of those who had come here from the USSR were saying that we were going to capitalism. For them this word was a curse word, but for me it meant a society where an individual could work to support his family and make a good living.  Religion was allowed. People could go to synagogues and celebrate religious holidays openly. But unfortunately, the Soviet regime broke people of the habit to religion so much that at the beginning we couldn’t even gather 10 men for a minyan.