Remma Kogan’s father Moisey Kogan and his brother Anatoli Kogan

This is my father Moisey Kogan (first on the left) and his brother Anatoli. This photo was taken in Odessa in 1940.

In 1934 my father became dean of Electric Engineering Faculty of Communications College. I was 12, but I remember well how in 1937 [during Great Terror] my father's cousin brother on my grandmother's side Michael who was the town prosecutor was arrested. He spent 19 years in prison, camps and exile where he lost his eye. In 1956 he was rehabilitated and resumed his membership in the Party. He was secretary of a big kolkhoz. He died of stomach cancer in 1959 at the age of 56. My father, who was a member of the Party had to inform the Party unit of his college of his cousin brother's arrest. He did and they started a case against my father right away and formed an investigation commission. This commission began to receive reports that my father had ties with trotskists in Kirovograd when he worked in the regional Party committee and that being a dean at the Electric Engineering College he developed 'saboteur curriculum', kept silent about his bourgeois origin and so on: there were numerous reports. Some colleagues were turning their back against him demonstratively at work and some were just ignoring him. My mother feared that my father would be arrested. Every night she waited for a 'Black Maria' car looking out of the window.

When I grew older my father told me about the meeting where they were reviewing his personal case in college. Most of his colleagues were sitting looking downward and many had a look of fear in their eyes. Many of them made inculpatory speeches. The meeting took a decision: 'For losing his watchfulness, for his ties and cooperation with enemies of the people we expel him from the Party and submit the investigation material to NKVD'. My father was fired. His acquaintances avoided him. Only his closest friends remained with him in the trying times: assistant professors David Isaacovich Oigenzicht, Jew, and Yuri Robertovich Lang, German. They stayed in our house until late at night trying to support my father. Considering the circumstances their conduct was heroic. To support the family my father had to take up miscellaneous jobs; he worked at a plant and on construction sites. He submitted two claims of appeal requesting the town party committee bureau to reconsider his case. My father was very surprised that he was not arrested at that time. In November 1939 my father resumed his membership in the Party and got back his job.

In 1941 when the Great Patriotic War began my father went to the front. During the war he was near Moscow, in Ukraine, Northern Caucasus and in the Crimea. Throughout the war he only spent 11 days in standby. In January 1945 he traveled through Odessa and then he went to Romania. After the war with Germany was over my father was sent to the war with Japan. My father returned to Odessa in September 1945. After the war my father became chief of the Electric Engineering Department in the Communications College. My father died from prostate cancer in 1986. He had hypertension and two heart attacks. My father was buried in the international cemetery in Odessa. He was not buried in accordance with the Jewish tradition.

My father's younger brother Anatoli was born in 1909. Anatoli lived with my father's family in Kirovograd and then Odessa. He studied at the Communication College in Odessa and worked at a plant. In 1931 Anatoli finished his college and got a job assignment in Khabarovsk. He married his fellow-student Maria Sviridova, Russian. Maria was a communication engineer, but she worked very little. She dedicated herself to her family. Anatoli and his family lived in Khabarovsk where he was chief of regional communication department. During the Great Patriotic War Anatoli got an assignment to work in Nikolaev, Ukraine. Anatoli worked there for a short time and then was transferred to Kuibyshev [Samara at present]. Anatoli has three children: daughter Nelly and two sons, Sergei and Valeri. They finished a conservatory. Nelly was a teacher in a music school in Kuibyshev. She was married and had a son named Mikhail. Nelly died in the 1970s. Valeri is married and has two children. Sergei is married and has three children. Anatoli's sons play in the Philharmonic orchestra in Kuibyshev. Anatoli died in Kuibyshev in the 1980s. His wife died shortly afterward.