Tag #155506 - Interview #94697 (Larisa SHYHMAN)

My older son Leonid took after his father, he is very smart. Gennadiy is also smart, but Leonid is smarter. He was very handsome, everybody said so. He was tall, my both sons are tall. Leonid had excellent marks and went to enter a college in Moscow. He wanted to be a theoretical physicist. There was the ‘fifth line item’ problem and it was hard for Jews to enter colleges. He passed his exams in physics and mathematic wonderfully , there were no marks, only plus marks. He got three plus marks in physics and three in mathematic. He even solved some problems in the same way as the teacher who was checking his test. However, he was not so successful with his composition… Misha didn’t mentioned it to him and I didn’t know either that it was better to make it short, but with no mistakes. His subjects was ‘Scientists all over the world’ and he got confused. Who knows correct spelling of those Japanese names? He got a ‘two’. And he returned home. We hastily submitted his documents to Kiev Polytechnic College. They wanted him to fail, of course. Here in Kiev. Anti-Semitism was not so strong in Moscow. He was so bright with his answers, particularly in physics, that one lecturer in the commission said: ‘That’s enough with torturing him’. There was a woman among them, nasty one, she pushed on him so hard that even her colleague couldn’t bear it longer. ‘That’s it’ – he said, - ‘What do you want from him?’ - They asked him so many additional questions! But he was good at physics and mathematic. He had to solve a problem at the exam (and maybe it was plotted so), and he found a mistake. He explained it in his test. As for Russian compositions, he got a ‘3’ again. But he entered a Power Faculty. What of it? He finished it and wrote the best diploma. They said he should go to production industry right away, but the ‘fifth item’ and – they refused to employ Leonid. Assistant dean went to ask for him and to tell them how smart he was, but ‘he was a Jew’ and they didn’t accept him. So he got a job where a 10-grade schoolgirl could cope. He was so distressed. This killed him morally.