Tag #145499 - Interview #92161 (Sofia Furman)

After the 8th grade my son tried to enter Suvorov College, which trains officers. He passed all exams but wasn’t accepted. His documents, which he submitted to the entrance examination commission, stated, ‘Mother is a Jewess’ [20]. Mikhail decided to enter the Suvorov Military College, though we knew that they didn’t accept Jews: a secret rule everyone knew about. The formal reason for refusal was his poor eyesight. Mikhail wanted to become a professional soldier very much – like his grandfather and my father: I told him a lot about my father. He continued to study in high school at the mathematical department. However, he was in a bad mood the whole year. He simply didn’t want to study. I cried a lot during that time. He said that it didn’t make any sense because he wouldn’t be accepted to any place. He was in a really bad mood, he was very much offended. However, he finished the ten-year school in 1977 with good marks and entered the Higher Military Engineering College of Communication – at present it is called the Academy of Communication.