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Emerich Grinbaum - January 8, 2001

The Doctors Plot?

No. The Doctors Plot was in '53.

Ah.

Well, '52, '53. Oh, we heard terrible things, you know. The patientuh, didn't let us Jewish, Jewish doctors or Jewish students to touch becausewe are going to kill them or something like that. Oh that was the sit...terriblesituation. But it lasted several months because you know, Stalin died andthe, the thing was improved. They let us. They, they, they arrested a lotof Jews uh, in my city and the-I remember they arrested the, the uh, chiefdoctor in my city, he was Jewish, uh. And, and he survived but, he came backuh. But in '55, that was after Doctor Plot, that was during Khrushchev. In'55 he still was anti-Semitism rampant you know, although there was no Stalin.And I remember in, in co...two month's prior to, to getting the diploma, therewas a commission and they called us and they give us assignment and we haveto go. That was uh, you couldn't choose where you go. You have to go whereverthe Party, Communist Party uh, sends you. You know, for the, for the Homeland,you need. And we knew that we Jews and some other, we were sent far away tothe worst part of the Soviet Union, Siberia or, or-we knew that. And thatwas the, the practice. And I tried to do everything to prevent this. Firstof all it's, you go there, you're just like, like, like, terrible. You, likea wilderness. Plus to leave my father. Uh, uh, he was old already and his-my,my stepmother was very sick. She had breast cancer at that time and my fatherhad a prostate problem, prostate cancer, and-the reason I'm telling-and Ibrought documents from the doctors applying and that was written, writtenin the, in the, in the law that if a student has relatives, close relatives-students-sickand so, they have-they can uh, request to stay close. If not in the same city,but in some vicinity. So I presented this document. Nothing helped. Nothinghelped. So when I told them that no, we cannot. The commission was there allthe you know, the university and from the Party and the big commission. Andthe, the, we had everybody in the middle of discussion you know, where tosend. And they suggest me to go to far east, there was close to...