Tag #151804 - Interview #84041 (Yacob Hollander)

Those events that residents of the USSR were concerned about went past Beregovo: campaign against cosmopolites [11], and doctors’ plot [12]. The majority of doctors were Jews in Beregovo, but they kept their jobs and were never subject of discussions at meetings. Thus, those people who moved to Subcarpathia from the USSR after World War II chatted about doctors poisoners, but Subcarpathian residents never shared this opinion with them. I remember 5th March 1953, the day when Stalin died. I was director of a store in Mochola. There were few villagers who had moved from the USSR. I remember them sobbing as if their relative had died: ‘Our father died, how are we going to live without him?’ It seemed absurd to me. Didn’t they understand that it was not the end of the world and that the world might even become better without Stalin? I invited them to the storeroom to have a drink of mourning for his soul. I thought to myself that he might have died earlier, but of course, I understood that I couldn’t say such things aloud.