For five years, he never left the house except at night – even to go to the bathroom, which was outside the house. He used a chamber pot, which my mother would discreetly empty while he was davening.
You lived during Stalin’s infamous Doctors’ Plot of 1953. What was the atmosphere like at the time?
It was a very terrible time. Stalin was crazy. He announced that a group of Politburo doctors planned to kill the highest Soviet rulers, and every day there were articles in the newspaper identifying the doctors as Jewish. People would beat up Jews in the street and police would say, “Don’t touch them, we’ll soon kill them all.”
The plan was to hang the doctors in Red Square in March 1953 after which the people would vent their anger against the enemies of the Soviet Union – the Jews. Then Stalin, “the father of humanity,” would step in to protect the Jews and send them to Siberia. There were three million Jews in the Soviet Union. One million would be killed in the pogroms, one million would die on their way to Siberia, and one million would stay there.
But then Stalin suddenly died on March 5.
So Jews were really scared?
We thought this was the end! My father bought some china for Pesach, and my aunt said, “What are you doing? We have to buy food for the road to Siberia. How will we survive?”
How did you finally get out of the Soviet Union?
There was already a little more freedom in the late 1960s. I tried to leave for 14 years and finally in 1971 the government said yes.
Why did they say yes?
Nobody knew their policy. Some they let go, some not.
What’s your view of Russia today?
The whole world is against Putin, but I am 100 percent for him. He’s a dictator, but I would say he loves Jews. In his book he writes about his Jewish karate teacher, and he’s the hero in the book. You see how much freedom he gives the Jews, how he invites the chief rabbi of Russia, Rabbi Berel Lazar, to the Kremlin. Nobody can deny his good relationship to the Jews. What else should we ask for? That Russia be a democracy and some anti-Semite be elected?