Tag #155356 - Interview #103735 (Nikolay Schwartz Biography)

Many things about the Soviet regime seemed wild to me. The Soviet regime waged severe struggle against religion [14]. The majority of population in Subcarpathia, Jewish and non-Jewish, was religious. Religion was an important part of people’s life. Soviet authorities were closing temples and arrest clergymen sending them in exile. There was only one main synagogue operating in Uzhgorod. The rest of the synagogues were closed. This main synagogue was on the Uzh River. Later they also closed it and it became the Philharmonic. People were confused. They were not allowed to attend the synagogue or churches or celebrate holidays. Soviet authorities might fire people from work for this. Only old people who had nothing to fear went to the synagogue. There was nothing like this during the Czechoslovakian or Hungarian rule. There was also a concern of anti-Semitism that came to Subcarpathia with the Soviet power. Of course, there was anti-Semitism during the Hungarian rule, but it was when Hungary was fascists, and nobody believed there could be anti-Semitism in the country struggling against fascism. There were only demonstrations of routinely anti-Semitism at first. However, only newcomers from the USSR could say ‘zhyd’ [kike] in the streets or in transport. Later it developed into the state level anti-Semitism. In the late 1940s Jews had problems with getting a job or going to study in higher educational institutions. Also, the blind faith of newcomers from the USSR in the infallible rightfulness of the Communist Party and Stalin was just scary. Struggle against cosmopolites [15] in the USSR in 1948 had hardly any impact on Subcarpathia, but its range was fearful. I read newspapers and didn’t understand why those people were arrested. In January 1953 the ‘doctors’ plot’ [16] began. Perhaps, the majority of doctors in Uzhgorod were Jews. Local residents of Subcarpathia ignored newspaper publications and continued to visit Jewish doctors. Whenever somebody standing in line to a doctor’s office said something about ‘poisoners’ and ‘murderers’, this somebody was surely a newcomer from the USSR.