Tag #146759 - Interview #83417 (Genrikh Len )

Since my position at work demanded that I have a family, I married Tatyana Anatolievna Pomazanskaya two years later, taking a considerable share of risk. She was born in 1946, and seemed to me to be Jewish at first. She worked as a teacher. We officially registered our marriage. In 1973 my second son Anatoly was born. He lives in St. Petersburg now. Tatyana turned out to be Russian. There was much confusion with that. I was mistaken, my father was mistaken, we both believed that she had Jewish roots, but her relatives insisted that they were all Russian. When the mass emigration of Soviet Jews began, she declared, that she hadn’t intended to marry a foreigner, that she was not going to leave for Israel, if I decided to move there. She addressed the director of her school asking not to dismiss her from work [as was customary then], if it became clear that her husband had emigrated to Israel, and that she would rather break off her marriage, and that she had nothing in common with me. Notwithstanding all the fuss, I remained on good terms with Anatoly.