Published Nov. 01, 2023 4:49 AM EDT
“To us it looks like the beginning of a new Holocaust in Russia, something we would never think we would live long enough to see,” Alla told The Daily Beast. “Just recently I took my little granddaughter to a Jewish kindergarten but today I would be terrified to take her there—it is too dangerous.”
Hate pushed more than 2 million Jews out of the USSR—the post-World War II emigration was one of the largest in history—with families escaping to Israel, Germany. and the United States. Alla and Grigory are living witnesses to several decades of state antisemitism.
“Soviet Jews could not go to universities, state institutes did not employ Jews, there were very few professional options for us. Both the state and everyday antisemitism were overwhelming; when I was giving birth to my daughter in a Moscow hospital, a nurse told me that I was fat, because I was Jewish,” Alla told The Daily Beast. “Many of our friends emigrated but we stayed to see a change for the better, to visit the Kremlin with the Russian Jewish Congress.”
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