Tag #148494 - Interview #78035 (marina sineokaya)

On 1st September, I went to the classes and was surprised not to see Veniamin. I couldn’t imagine that he might have missed the first day of school. After classes I decided to call on him at his house. His sobbing mother opened the door. She told me that Veniamin had been arrested at night and nobody explained anything to her. What could a seventeen-year old boy have done for the NKVD

[23] to be interested in him? I tried to comfort his worried mother by saying that it was a mistake and he would be back, but he was only fully exonerated ten years after I got married [see Rehabilitation in the Soviet Union] [24]
Even in his Komsomol membership card it was stated that he had paid the entire membership fee for the period of his service in the Gulag [25], and in exile later on. Veniamin told us the story of his arrest. His cousin was missing. Somebody told him that they saw a lady being shoved into a car. It was usually done by the people closest to Beriya. [26]. All Moscovites were aware of that. Probably somebody got to know that Veniamin was striving to find his lost cousin and he was arrested that very night. I believed him. There were other cases similar to that as well.