Samuel Zaltzberg

This is my mother's brother Samuel Zaltzberg. This photo was taken in Odessa in the 1930s . Uncle Samuel was born in 1897. He also finished the grammar school of Maliarov. Samuel entered the Faculty of Natural Sciences of Novorossiysk University in 1915 and then continued his studies at Kiev Polytechnic College. Once, during the Civil War, when he was traveling home from Kiev by train, the train was attacked by Petliura troops. They were looking for Jews, but he managed to hide. In 1929 the Soviet government sent Samuel to advanced training at Hettingen University and Hanover Polytechnic College in Germany. Samuel was a construction engineer. Before the Great Patriotic War he taught the subject of 'resistance of material' at Odessa Industrial College. He married Mina Vysokaya in 1938. She was a lecturer at the Odessa Conservatory. They didn't have children. During the Great Patriotic War uncle Samuel lectured at Tashkent University, Tashkent Textile College and the Academy of Armored Troops of the Soviet Army. During the war he joined the Communist Party. He knew the theory of Marxism-Leninism well. In 1949, when he was a lecturer at Odessa Polytechnic College, Uncle Samuel was accused of cosmopolitism. I was waiting for him in the hallway of the conference-room where a meeting took place. The subject of the meeting was my uncle's 'case'. His friends and students spoke at the meeting criticizing my uncle. Later they apologized and confessed to him that they had been acting against their will. It was true because if they had refused to speak against him they would have had to share his fate. After the meeting I accompanied my uncle to his home. He didn't speak on the way, but when we arrived at his place he said, 'Well, I should expect an arrest now, I suppose'. He was so shocked that he went to bed in his clothes and shoes. He slept 48 hours. Later he went to the Central Committee of the CPSU in Moscow. He managed to resume his membership in the Party, but not his job. He moved to Penza, where he worked at Penza Industrial College, and then to Kishinev, where he was also a lecturer. Samuel returned to Odessa in the 1960s after he retired. My uncle was a communist, but these events left a deep imprint on his heart. Samuel's wife Mina died in 1977. Uncle Samuel lived the rest of his life with me. He died in 1986. We buried him in the Tair cemetery [the town cemetery] in Odessa.