Tag #155931 - Interview #78231 (yakov voloshyn)

I went to the NKVD office. The reason they summoned me was the photograph 'A group of red army soldiers' printed on the cover of 'Proletarskaya Pravda'. It was summer and soldiers wore their shirts and field caps and there were star badges on their caps. Photographs were retouched with raster, or to make it easier, grid. This raster gave the impression of crosses and looking through a magnifying glass at some angle one could see a swastika on stars, a full or half image. The newspaper was on the desk in front of an investigation officer. He asked me how I managed to have let this happen. I explained that it was a printing defect. He didn't believe me and I began to explain the technical details. I also mentioned to him that the newspapers began to use diagonal raster to print illustrations to exclude the swastika image or other images. They let me go, but warned me that this wasn't the end of the story.

The printing office was in the yard of the editorial office. I often took my photographs there. I went to the zincographer's shop and saw that there were individuals in civilian suits thoroughly studying the photograph matrix. They made sure that I didn't retouch stars. I didn't have to. I only retouched faces. Those NKVD officers checked the whole process including photography, copying, etching, etc. I have no doubts that a swastika appeared again. Then they repeated the process of printing this photograph to make sure that my explanation was correct. This was the end of it.