Tag #155716 - Interview #94745 (Tsyliya Spivak)

In 1949 I finished 10 grades with a good certificate. I could go to any higher educational institution like Kiev University, for example, considering its high prestige, but I had to start work to earn money as soon as possible and this made me go to Chernigov 2-year Pedagogical College. Actually, I was fond of literature and wanted to become a teacher since childhood. I studied well. Firstly, I liked it, and secondly, I was stimulated to receive a stipend for advanced students [Editor’s note: students who had all excellent grades in the institutions of higher education were entitled to receive the so-called “Lenin’s stipend,” which was somewhat more than the regular one]. It was very important for our poor family. Besides, when I entered this college, my mother and I rented an apartment near the college so that Sima and her children felt more comfortable in their room. I studied during the period of state anti-Semitism, so called struggle against rootless cosmopolites 18. I didn’t face it, but many Jewish lecturers were fired from the college. I remember our lecturer on Marxism-Leninism asking for our notes to prove that he didn’t say anything seditious to his students. It didn’t help him: he was fired.