Tag #143275 - Interview #92684 (Semyon Ghendler)

My father Zachari Ghendler was born in Ovruch in 1904. He received traditional Jewish education: he finished cheder and four years of Jewish elementary school. He knew Yiddish well and he also knew the Torah, but during the Soviet regime he was an atheist. In 1917, during the revolution, my father joined the Red army like many Jewish young people escaping from pogroms and poverty in their towns hoping for a different life. My father served in cavalry. After the Civil War my father was a laborer at different jobs. In 1925, when he met my mother, he was a laborer at the leather factory: he handled skin leather.