Tag #149381 - Interview #96226 (Ihil Shraibman)

At the age of 16 I went to the seminary in Chernovtsy [today Ukraine]; it trained teachers for the Tarbut school [11] in Hebrew. There were such schools in every town in Bessarabia. However, I already became a leftist. It resulted from my reading: if one read Itshack Perez [12], one became a leftist for sure. In my opinion, the Jewish literature was leftist, rather than Communist. In Chernovtsy I didn’t hesitate to join the ‘Krasny Shkolnik’ [Red pupil in Russian], an underground youth organization; it was some sort of Komsomol [13] for pupils. We had secret meetings and distributed proclamations. I remember bringing some to the seminary where I gave them to the first-year students. One of them reported on me to the director. Our director Mark, chief rabbi of Bukovina [14], taught us religion. The next day Mark told me to come to his office after classes. He took a proclamation out of a drawer: ‘Is this yours?’ – ‘Yes.’ – ‘You must know who you give them to. Don’t be stupid again.’ He could have expelled me, but he didn’t. He never touched upon this subject again. I also remember Doctor Porat, our literature and language teacher. The students loved him.