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They registered national origin at school and my classmates knew I was a Jew, but nobody disturbed me. We were pioneers and were raised to be internationalists. In the third grade our choir sang a Ukrainian and Jewish songs in an Olympiad. When in 1936 a war in Spain [editor’s note: Spain between 1936-1939 was the staging ground for Hitler's Blitzkrieg giving General Franco victory over the Republican government. The Spanish Civil War was not only a battle against fascism, but a social revolution. It involved all of Europe and the political forces of the left and the right, in the struggle to defend socialism and democracy from the forces of reaction.] began, we learned a Spanish song. We had a wonderful teacher of the Ukrainian language. Her name was Ustia Leontieva. She liked me very much. My Ukrainian teacher Ivan Lagodynskiy taught me to understand literature correctly.
In 1931 my father was appointed chief of the town trade department. He had an office with a telephone in Kreshchatik [Kreshchatik is the main street of Kiev]. It was an honorable position, but my father lacked education and was sent to a training course for district suppliers. Tania was helping him to solve mathematic problems since she had finished a grammar school. In 1932 after finishing his training my father was sent to Kozelets, a small town in 60 km from Kiev where he was chairman of the district trade department, though he was far from any commercial businesses. His main duty was to fulfill directions of the district party committee. My father rented a little room from a sewing machine repairman whose surname was Ruthstein; he was a Jew. My father rarely traveled to Kiev. The town authorities insisted that my father moved his family to Kozelets, but they didn’t provide any dwelling to him. Tania didn’t want to leave the apartment in Kiev. She took my brother and me to Kozelets in spring and we studied there until October holidays. We were cooped in a 10-square-meter room through summer and only in late autumn Tania took us back home.
In 1931 my father was appointed chief of the town trade department. He had an office with a telephone in Kreshchatik [Kreshchatik is the main street of Kiev]. It was an honorable position, but my father lacked education and was sent to a training course for district suppliers. Tania was helping him to solve mathematic problems since she had finished a grammar school. In 1932 after finishing his training my father was sent to Kozelets, a small town in 60 km from Kiev where he was chairman of the district trade department, though he was far from any commercial businesses. His main duty was to fulfill directions of the district party committee. My father rented a little room from a sewing machine repairman whose surname was Ruthstein; he was a Jew. My father rarely traveled to Kiev. The town authorities insisted that my father moved his family to Kozelets, but they didn’t provide any dwelling to him. Tania didn’t want to leave the apartment in Kiev. She took my brother and me to Kozelets in spring and we studied there until October holidays. We were cooped in a 10-square-meter room through summer and only in late autumn Tania took us back home.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Leonid Kotliar