Tag #116251 - Interview #100288 (Eta Gurvichuyte )

We were not children any more and many of us had our own political views. My sister Anna was absolutely apolitical; my brother Jacob however joined a Zionist [8] organization Beitar [9] and dreamt of Israel. I was interested in communistic ideas. In that period of my life I made friends with Evsey Yatsovskiy. He was an underground komsomol member [10]. His mother, wife of prominent moviemaker, was a communist. These were the years of adolescent romanticism, when the communistic ideas of all-in-all equality and brotherhood seemed the most appealing. I also started attending meetings of underground komsomol. There we studied the works written by classics of Marxism and Leninism, read newspapers and magazines from Soviet Union, dreamt of bright communistic future. We had no idea of repressions, arrests, and all that horror of Stalin’s regime. We sincerely admired Stalin. Sometimes our meetings took place in our house. Father often showed up at home in wee hours of the morning. He barely paid attentions to my surroundings. Teresa was the one who cared the most. She understood nothing from what we were talking about. She was worried that the authorities would find out about our secretive meetings. At times during komsomol meetings where the ideas of the triumph of communistic ideas were expressed, Teresa knelt and started praying. I do not know what for she was asking God. One of her requests was to protect me from adversities and calamities.