Tag #144542 - Interview #97065 (Irina Soboleva-Ginsburg )

Before the war he had a job with the Moscow cinema studio. I know that a famous Jewish writer Isaac Babel [5] was his friend. They were planning to make a film called The Wondering Stars, based on a book by Sholem Aleichem [6]. Babel came to their house to discuss their plans. Some time later, in the 1930s, my aunt was summoned to the KGB office where she was told to report on every word that Babel and Grigory were saying. They told her, ‘Babel visits you. You are a Soviet patriot and you must listen to what they talk about and report to authorities on every word you’ve heard’. My aunt Maria was shocked. There were two officers in the office. One of them went out and then the other whispered to my aunt that she might refuse. When the first one came back she said that she couldn’t do it. She became hysterical and they told her to go.

In 1939 Babel was arrested.