Tag #155218 - Interview #103686 (Ilia Rozenfeld Biography)

In August 1939 the Ribbentrop-Molotov 21 Pact was signed surprisingly for us. This was weird at least: this surprisingly emerging friendship with fascist Germany. This so-called friendship did not deceive anybody. Many people understood that we were on the edge of war. My close friend Mitia Zayats, musician, was about two years older than me. We were both fond of music.  He was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison. I met with him after the war. He was an ill broken man. His fingers were frost-bitten in the camp and he could never play again. What happened was that after the execution of this Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact in 1939Mitia said at one meeting: ‘Well, we will have problems because of this’.   The following night he was arrested as an ‘enemy of the people’.