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I became a Komsomol [7] member in 1936, when I was in the 9th grade. It was a natural flow of events - from pioneers to Komsomol members. I never took part in public events, but it didn't ever occur to me that I might skip Komsomol. When I was in the 10th grade we were allowed to put up a Christmas tree at school, it was so lovely! Some traditions have ancient roots, and the tradition to decorate a Christmas tree dated back to the times of Tsar Peter [Peter the Great] [8]. It was hard to eliminate old traditions from people's lives and many people kept having a tree. Christmas Trees were forbidden before with the excuse that it was a waste of trees. [Editor's note: Actually, Christmas trees were forbidden by the Soviet power as vestige of the bourgeois past.]
There was one Jewish lower secondary school at the Jewish children's home in Poltava. Aunt Runia, my father's sister, worked at this school as a medical nurse. She took children home to make them familiar with life at home. I had many friends from this school. Vera, the director of this children's home, was a very nice and kind woman. She was like a mother to the children. She spent all her time with them, and they loved her. They had clubs at school and organized amateur concerts. To complete their secondary education these children went to ordinary schools. There were some of the children from the children's home in our school. They lived in the children's home until they finished secondary school. My mother invited many of them to our home to treat them to something delicious - she cooked traditional food or gave them tea and sweets, just to support them and let them know what the warmth of a home feels like.
Two of my uncles were arrested in 1937 [during the so-called Great Terror] [9]. One of them was my mother's brother Semyon. He was a prosecutor in Kharkov. He was a very smart and intelligent man. The other one was Nyura's husband, Ilia Gershinovich. He was chief engineer at Dnepro power station, and later worked for Kaganovich [10]. My aunts went to numerous authorities to find out what they were charged for, but they got no explanation. Only when the process of rehabilitation began [following the Twentieth Party Congress] [11], we found out that our relatives had been executed in 1937 and only found 'not guilty' in 1953.
There was one Jewish lower secondary school at the Jewish children's home in Poltava. Aunt Runia, my father's sister, worked at this school as a medical nurse. She took children home to make them familiar with life at home. I had many friends from this school. Vera, the director of this children's home, was a very nice and kind woman. She was like a mother to the children. She spent all her time with them, and they loved her. They had clubs at school and organized amateur concerts. To complete their secondary education these children went to ordinary schools. There were some of the children from the children's home in our school. They lived in the children's home until they finished secondary school. My mother invited many of them to our home to treat them to something delicious - she cooked traditional food or gave them tea and sweets, just to support them and let them know what the warmth of a home feels like.
Two of my uncles were arrested in 1937 [during the so-called Great Terror] [9]. One of them was my mother's brother Semyon. He was a prosecutor in Kharkov. He was a very smart and intelligent man. The other one was Nyura's husband, Ilia Gershinovich. He was chief engineer at Dnepro power station, and later worked for Kaganovich [10]. My aunts went to numerous authorities to find out what they were charged for, but they got no explanation. Only when the process of rehabilitation began [following the Twentieth Party Congress] [11], we found out that our relatives had been executed in 1937 and only found 'not guilty' in 1953.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Ronia Finkelshtein