Tag #115382 - Interview #78768 (Amalia Blank)

I found out that the Lvov theater was closed down after the war. My husband and I had nowhere to go. We stayed in Kuybyshev, worked and lived somehow. Then in 1948 the campaign against cosmopolitans [24] started. I was aware that they were against Jews. It was not even concealed. The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee [25], founded by Mikhoels, was divulged. There were incessant processes against Jewish cosmopolitans. There were more articles in the papers, TV and radio broadcasts, where outstanding scientists, men of art and literature were stigmatized. All of them were Jews. All Jewish theaters on the territory of the Soviet Union were closed down. Stalin closed them all. None out of the 13 were left. Of course, the greatest actors were sent to the camps or they were executed.

Those who spoke Yiddish, not Russian could be accused of Zionism which was equal to treason in the Soviet Union at that time. People were indicted, tried, sent to the Gulag. Some of them were even shot. It was terrible and everybody understood what was going on in his own way.

I took it as a tragedy for Jewish people as well as for the entire mankind. How could it have happened in a country that struggled against fascists? I understood that it was very dangerous for me, as I was Mikhoel’s student who was also under disgrace, an actress of the Jewish theater. So I clearly was a cosmopolitan for them, who should be fought. My fate saved me here again. In spite of all, I was not shot, and they didn’t even take measures against me. It was a miracle. I was the director of a folklore theater in the cultural society of metallurgists. I was not even fired at that time. It happened later.