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My father and I were very close. He loved me very much, maybe for the reason that I was the junior. Father was a very intelligent man, well-read and politically-minded. My friends respected him, even when we became adults. My friends took humiliation of the Jewish peoples very hard. I remember he often used to say: ’Why Tartar and Gypsy songs are broadcast on the radio, and there are no Jewish songs? Shall we have lived by the time when it happens?’. Of course I was moved by that spirit of my father. Of course after all father had to go through, he did not trust the soviet regime very much, and due to that we argued with my father, if a discussion of a 14-15 years old boy with a wise grown-up man can be taken for a dispute. Father mocked at my ideals. I remember how I used to prove that Dzerzhinskiy 29 – the chevalier of the revolution, whose motto was: ‘warm heart, sober mind and clean hands’. But my father objected to me, telling that Dzerzhinskiy was a bandit, who shot innocent people. How could I independently think at that time? Propaganda and slogans reverberating all day long thought for us. At times I was even ready for Pavlik Morozov’s feat 30, I wanted to stooge for my father, but probably the sense of decency, inherited from my parents, stopped me. 1936, 1937 … these were the years, when children were called upon and encouraged to betray their parents. Such disputes were not occasional. I was brought up by the soviet school, in a certain spirit. Knowledge came much later, when I learnt from life. At that time my life was short, tiny and unperceived.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Hertz Rogovoy