Tag #124512 - Interview #102821 (Vladimir Tseitlin)

Baiting of Jews commenced in 1948 with the outbreak of the miserable cosmopolitans processes  [Campaign against ‘cosmopolitans’] [37]. It was not a pre-war repressions period, when Stalin exterminated his adversaries without taking into account nationality. Since 1948 and up to Stalin’s death in March 1953 these were Jews who were hunted, and it was in the open. Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was exterminated [38]. Some of its members were shot and some of them sent to Gulag. Solomon Mikhoels [39], the chairman of the committee and a wonderful actor of the Jewish theatre was assassinated. It was an imitated car accident, but everybody knew that it was a murder. My mother and her friends went to the synagogue at Malaya Bronnaya. There was a commemorating prayer – Kaddish - over Mikhoels. It was the time when father was expelled from the party without any reasons. We understood that it was just the beginning and he was imminent with more dangerous things. In 1950, upon graduation of the 3rdcourse, I and some more of the Jews were expelled from the academy in spite of the fact that all of us had straight excellent marks, and sent to the remote military commands. I was sent to a small squadron in Siberia. I was the commander of the squadron in the corps regiment.