Tag #157357 - Interview #88501 (Noemi Korsan-Ekert)

1968 affected us very badly. Very badly. My husband lost his position on the charge that he supported the funds for the opposition, which wasn’t even true. Kuba had little to do with the opposition, he simply knew some of the people. Our friend, or actually my friend, Szymon Szechter, a historian from Lwow, had a private secretary because he was blind. The secretary’s name was Nina Karsof. Allegedly my husband was collecting money for them. But it was me who saw Szechter, heard he was in need and helped him financially, not my husband. My husband only knew Szechter through me and anyway they had hardly any contacts with each other. But that was only a pretext.

After the war we didn’t really realize the extent of anti-Semitism. The worst was the state anti-Semitism of 1968. Apparently 1956 was bad, too, but that’s when the emigration started; very many people left. I didn’t feel – we didn’t think – we didn’t take anti-Semitism seriously.

But when this official anti-Semitism began in 1968, it was terrible. It damaged some kind of trust we had, we were in despair. But we never thought of leaving. Kuba, my husband, claimed he couldn’t survive ruined abroad. And I couldn’t imagine surviving abroad, period. I couldn’t imagine living permanently abroad. I had everything that was mine here. And even this filth of 1968, that was mine, too. That’s what I thought. But the experience was emotionally draining.