Tag #143395 - Interview #78176 (Rachil Meitina)

I spent my early childhood in Petrograd. I recall this town as a fairy tale. I found it very beautiful. There was a nice yard with a garden in it. We lived on a quiet street. There were stores and schools on the nearby lanes. My sister studied in one of them. Matveyevskaya church was on our street. It was demolished in 1930. We had already left for Moscow by then. There were synagogues in the city that I never went to since it wasn’t a custom in the family. They were destroyed in the 1930s when the authorities struggled against religion [20]. It was a clean town with numerous private shops. I remember the period of the NEP [21] when stores were full. I remember delicious chocolate. My mother gave me some change and I bought a chocolate teddy bear.