Tag #146960 - Interview #78107 (faina sandler)

I faced anti-Semitism at school for the first time. It didn't come from my classmates, but from their parents. The parents of two girls in our class worked at the NKVD. They were spoiled girls and didn't study well. The mother of one of them came to school and screamed that Jewish girls had the highest grades in the Russian language when her daughter only had a '2' or '3'. She was asking whether it was possible that Jewish girls knew Russian better than a Russian girl. Then I understood what anti-Semitism meant. I had excellent marks in all subjects, and nobody doubted that I was going to receive a gold medal. I passed all 12 final exams with the highest grades, but got a '4' in composition. When I demanded that they showed this composition to me they said that I made no mistakes, but got a lower grade for my handwriting. It was ridiculous. I finished school in 1952 and received a silver medal.