Tag #150132 - Interview #97046 (Evgenia Gendler)

Arrests in 1937 [Great Terror] [8] had an impact on our family too. My mother’s younger sister Sima was a striking beauty.  When after the revolution of 1917 the Civil War [9] began in Russia there were many foreign visitors sympathizing with Bolsheviks coming to our country. Sima’s future husband Yakov Bugdant, an Austrian businessman, came to Russia to struggle for the Soviet power. I guess he had the rank of colonel at that time. My mother told me that Yakov was a very handsome and charming man. I don’t know how he met Sima, but they fell in love with one another. They got married. When the Civil War was over Yakov stayed in the Russian Federation. He became a colonel in the Crimean NKVD [10] office. Sima and Yakov settled down in Simferopol [800 km from Kiev] in the Crimea. They had two daughters: Anna and Lubov. They were older than we. Sima didn’t work. They were a wealthy family. My mother’s older sister Genia that was already a widow and her daughter Sonia went to live with Sima in Simferopol. Genia helped Sima with the housework. My mother told me that Sima visited us once and when she saw me taking the cow to the pasture she almost fainted. She couldn’t imagine that children could be forced to do work. Sima and her daughters didn’t do any housework. They had Genia and a housemaid to do this for them. In 1937 Yakov Bugdant was arrested. They couldn’t find any accusations against him. He was devoted to the Soviet power and was arrested innocent like many other people. In the charges against him it was stated that his deputy was an enemy of the people and Yakov was not vigilant enough to disclose him as such. He was sentenced to death and shot. There was a search in their home, but they found nothing suspicious. However, they confiscated their belongings and the apartment.  Aunt Sima adored her husband and after this lost her mind. She ran the streets looking for her husband.  Once she got under a tram by accident and lost a leg, but survived. After Sima’s husband was arrested our mother was very worried that they were going to arrest us, even though Sima didn’t keep in touch with us. My mother was a wife of a tinsmith and what did it have to do with a wife of an NKVD manager. During the war Sima and her daughters were evacuated to Siberia and after the war we lost all contacts with them. After Twentieth Party Congress [11] Yakov Bugdant was rehabilitated [12] posthumously. There is a stand dedicated to the life of Yakov Bugdant in the Historical Museum in Simferopol. After Yakov was arrested my mother’s older sister Genia and her daughter came to live with us.  They stayed with us until the war began. Grandmother Enta went to visit her relatives in Sverdlovsk shortly before the war. She died in Sverdlovsk in December 1941.

My older sister Elena finished secondary school in 1938. Elena wanted to continue her studies. She went to Sverdlovsk [over 1000 km from Moscow] where one of my mother’s distant relatives lived.  He offered Elena to live with his family. Elena failed at the entrance exam, but decided to stay there. She went to work as a laborer at a plant and studied in an evening accounting school.