Tag #132781 - Interview #78135 (esfir dener)

On 5th March 1953 Stalin died. I don't know whether his death and Purim happened on the same day. But anyway, in my childhood Purim was in March. And this was the happiest Purim in my life! When I got hold of a Soviet newspaper with a photograph of Stalin in the casket I kept it for a long time like a relic. I remember that Hitler committed suicide on 30th April and in the same way I remember that Stalin died on 5th March. They are both the same kind of evildoers for me. Looking at him in the casket I felt pleased that he had died. I met with so many wonderful people in the camp – there were masses of political prisoners sentenced for no reason. They were sentenced for 25 years of hard work, for which they weren't paid. Stalin plotted a system of credits, where one year was reckoned as three or seven years, and prisoners were happy that they worked off their 25 years in five or seven years, but they died before they were to be released. They either died from hard labor that was too much for them or they left the camps as cripples.