Selected text
Neither teachers, nor pupils of our school demonstrated anti-Semitism. In our class there studied both Jewish and Russian schoolchildren, number of Jewish children was less.
I came across manifestations of anti-Semitism in Usvyaty when I was a little boy. There lived Terekh, a Russian muzhik, a drunkard. When he got drunk, he bothered Jews with the following words: ‘You, dirty Jews, we will kill you!’ And so on. I keep it in mind since my childhood. I asked my parents about him, and they explained to me that he was only a drunkard. Our Russian neighbors also considered him to be only a drunkard.
At our school nobody ventured to behave that way.
The same was in Academy: neither teachers, nor cadets were anti-Semites. And there were a lot of Jewish cadets (25-30%).
Once again I came across manifestations of anti-Semitism here, in Leningrad and also during Stalin’s state campaign of anti-Semitism, but I’ll tell you about it later.
I came across manifestations of anti-Semitism in Usvyaty when I was a little boy. There lived Terekh, a Russian muzhik, a drunkard. When he got drunk, he bothered Jews with the following words: ‘You, dirty Jews, we will kill you!’ And so on. I keep it in mind since my childhood. I asked my parents about him, and they explained to me that he was only a drunkard. Our Russian neighbors also considered him to be only a drunkard.
At our school nobody ventured to behave that way.
The same was in Academy: neither teachers, nor cadets were anti-Semites. And there were a lot of Jewish cadets (25-30%).
Once again I came across manifestations of anti-Semitism here, in Leningrad and also during Stalin’s state campaign of anti-Semitism, but I’ll tell you about it later.
Period
Location
Usvyaty
Smolensk
Belarus
Interview
Boris Girshov