Tag #115375 - Interview #78768 (Amalia Blank)

At that time I was aware of the Soviet reality. Repressions started, though it was not the Great Terror [10] like in the late 1930s. There was the issue of ‘enemies of the people’ [11] at that time. Rich people were sent into exile, the Gulag [12]. I understood if I got money from America it would be revealed in the NKVD [13] right away and it would be easy to predict what would happen next. In such cases the state took half of the amount officially and the second half would be taken unofficially after arrest. It would have been useless to write to Uncle telling him not to bequeath me money, as the censorship would have noticed that. I decided not to respond and stop correspondence. It was my fault that I stopped keeping in touch with my relatives.