Tag #152912 - Interview #77951 (Esiah Kleiman)

We felt at home in Chernovtsy. Before the war Jews constituted 60% of its population. After the war the number dropped dramatically, but one could still hear Yiddish in the streets. There was a Jewish school, a Jewish theater and synagogues in town. Of course, there were no charity organizations during the Soviet period. Jews knew and supported each other. If somebody was having a difficult time people collected money and helped their neighbors as much as they could. Local people told us that there were demonstrations of anti-Semitism after the war that hadn't been there before the war. A person could be abused or humiliated just because he was a Jew. To be frank, this was mostly done by those who came to Chernovtsy from the USSR. But I think that in a way anti-Semitism has always existed. State anti-Semitism started with the campaign against 'cosmopolitans' 12 in 1948.