Tag #151576 - Interview #78173 (Seraphima Gurevich)

Soon after I was born we moved to another location where my father got a job assignment. I spent my childhood in the military residential camps in Shepetovka and Korosten. We lived in the barracks, which had many small rooms where the officers' families resided. There was a common toilet and kitchen with a few primus stoves. The majority of soldiers and officers were Russian. Our surroundings didn't allow a traditional Jewish way of life. When I grew up, my mother told me about her childhood and life in Polonnoye and about the Jewish traditions in their family. We all believed that her parents were retrogrades to observe all this religious 'nonsense'. We thought that religiosity was a vestige of the past. My mother was a typical Soviet woman and she didn't feel upset about not observing any Jewish traditions.