Tag #143204 - Interview #104000 (Natalia Zilberman Biography)

In 1932 NKVD officers came to our house with search. They were looking for weapons. There were no weapons in our house, but they took away all our valuables: my father’s watch that he had received for “Rescue activities during fire”, I don’t know any details only that he received it during the tsarist regime when he rescued someone during a fire, my mother’s golden watch on a chain with the engraving “From a grateful student”, rings, my mother’s golden medal that she was awarded after finishing school and my father’s box with pieces of gold.

My father was arrested. When he asked what where the charges they replied that they believed he knew who had gold in the neighborhood. They kept him in prison for two weeks. NKVD office was the next house to ours and I climbed over our fence into their yard and crawled to the window of the cell where they were keeping my father. My mother was afraid to go there. There was another inmate sharing the cell with my father. That man, an agricultural specialist, killed his wife, his 2-year old son and 7-year old stepson with an ax and threw their bodies into a silage pit. My father shared his food with him. He said he wasn’t stupid, but that he was probably crazy. In two weeks a new chief of NKVD office was appointed and he released my father. My father came home with a gray beard. His hair grew gray while he was in prison. They didn’t torture him, but being an inmate of a prison and stay in the same cell with a murderer was far too much for a decent and honest man that my father was. He fell on a chair and burst into tears. So you can imagine that my parents couldn’t accept this regime.