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I was shocked when I encountered anti-Semitism during my entrance period to university. I couldn't imagine anything like that existed. I finished school with a gold medal. At that time this was sufficient to enter a higher educational institution without taking exams. So I submitted my documents to University. I wanted to study at the economy department. I liked The Capital by Karl Marx. In general, I was a girl with high ideological principles and very intelligent. When at school I read works by philosophers, Kampanella, etc. I was familiar with this subject and wished to continue studying it. I submitted my documents and was rejected. They told me that I didn't make it. I have always been a fighter, so I made my way to the office of Bondarchuk, the rector. I went into his office and said, 'Competition! But we are out of any competition! Nobody called me in, nobody talked to me, I didn't take any exams. I submitted my documents, I have a gold medal - that should be it!' He said to me, 'It's because you are a Jew. We are only supposed to accept a certain percentage of Jews'. He said it openly. I went numb. This was the first case of anti-Semitism I experienced in my life. It had happened before that somebody would say 'zhydovka' and my response would be punching him with my fist. But nothing like that had ever happened in my life before. I left the rector's office. But with my high ideological principles and my faith in our system and justice I couldn't leave it at that. So I sat down and wrote a letter to Stalin without speaking to my parents.
It was a month or a month and a half later that I received a response from Stalin's reception office. Mine was a copy; the original letter was sent to the rector of the university. It said that nothing like that could possibly exist in our country. And they requested the rector to look into this issue personally, although I had written to them that it was the rector in person who had said that to me. My parents were horrified, when that response came, because everything could have ended in a very different way. If they had known, they would have sent me away from Kiev that very same day.
The rector of the university invited me to an interview. He asked where I studied and said that I should pass the exams of the term and then I could be transferred to university. But I was too indignant and proud and told him that I wouldn't study in their anti-Semitic university. This was the end of that issue. Nevertheless, I didn't want to study at the Economy Department and entered KPI the following year. I studied well. But that was the time of the struggle against cosmopolitism and it also echoed at Kiev Polytechnical Institute. I faced it for the second time, when they wanted to expel Jews from the Komsomol first and then, consequently, from the institute. All those students were Jewish. As we didn't have such serious things as discussions of Stalin's works they were picking on anything they could.
It was a month or a month and a half later that I received a response from Stalin's reception office. Mine was a copy; the original letter was sent to the rector of the university. It said that nothing like that could possibly exist in our country. And they requested the rector to look into this issue personally, although I had written to them that it was the rector in person who had said that to me. My parents were horrified, when that response came, because everything could have ended in a very different way. If they had known, they would have sent me away from Kiev that very same day.
The rector of the university invited me to an interview. He asked where I studied and said that I should pass the exams of the term and then I could be transferred to university. But I was too indignant and proud and told him that I wouldn't study in their anti-Semitic university. This was the end of that issue. Nevertheless, I didn't want to study at the Economy Department and entered KPI the following year. I studied well. But that was the time of the struggle against cosmopolitism and it also echoed at Kiev Polytechnical Institute. I faced it for the second time, when they wanted to expel Jews from the Komsomol first and then, consequently, from the institute. All those students were Jewish. As we didn't have such serious things as discussions of Stalin's works they were picking on anything they could.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Zina Kaluzhnaya