Esfir Dener performing

This is me performing. The photo was taken in Nyrob, Perm region in 1955. I was in exile in this town, on 1 May there was an amateur concert and we performed on the makeshift stage on a truck with the portraits of Lenin and Stalin in the background. Some spectator took this photograph and gave it to me. When I was still at the camp and it became known that I recited poems and narrated criminals stories in the evening the chief of the camp ordered me to come see him in his office. ''They told me you read in your barrack. I replied: 'Is it not allowed to do so?' 'It's all right, particularly since you read the classics. They say you dislike cursing. This means, you help with the education of other inmates. I think you should recite poems on Soviet holidays. You will make a list of what you are going to recite and show it to the censor, he needs to check it'. So I began to recite poems at concerts and participate in amateur performances. I enjoyed it very much.