Tag #153764 - Interview #102451 (Solomon Manevich)

At school we celebrated the Soviet holidays and went to parades on 1st May and 7th November 11. At home we had a festive dinner, but no guests since my mother had a secluded life. We didn’t celebrate New Year and didn’t have a Christmas tree since this was forbidden as vestige of the bourgeois past. Uncle Nohim celebrated Pesach and bought matzah, but gradually he stopped doing that, too. I don’t know any details since my mother didn’t allow me to enter my uncle’s room on religious holidays. She didn’t enter his room either. She thought that being a Soviet child I had nothing to do there. I don’t think he went to synagogue. He probably prayed at home, but I didn’t see it. He looked like an ordinary man wearing ordinary clothes. He wore no hat and I don’t think he followed kashrut since it was impossible in those years. There was no place to buy kosher products. It was even hard to get non-kosher food. We shared the kitchen and meals living together. In 1920s struggle against religion 12 was at its height. Religious people were losing their jobs and imprisoned and we stopped celebrating religious holidays at home.