DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Rabovsky, Semyon full unedited video ID IS069.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4gq6r42q ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN TABLE OF CONTENTS ITEM TRANSCRIPT ENGLISH TRANSLATION 2 CITATION & RIGHTS 14 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 1/14 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Rabovsky, Semyon full unedited video ID IS069.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4gq6r42q ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN TRANSCRIPT ENGLISH TRANSLATION —Today is March 5, 2008. We are in Tel Aviv, meeting with a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. Please introduce yourself and tell us briefly about your pre-war life, family, which school you attended. Please proceed. I was born on December 30, 1922 in a blacksmith’s family. My father was called Froim, and Mother’s name was Khasya. I was born in Korosten, Zhytomyr Oblast, Ukraine. In 1940, I enrolled at Korosten Infantry School. The schools would only admit eighteen-year-olds, but since I indicated my year of birth as 1922, they thought I was eighteen, nobody noticed the fact that I was born on December 30. So, at 17 and three months, not even that, I became a cadet at the infantry school. —I am sorry for interrupting, what did your mother do for a living? Mom was a blue-color worker. Father was employed at Oktyabrskaya Forge in Korosten. In 1937 he was arrested and sentenced under the Article 58-11 for belonging to a counter-revolutionary organization. He was illiterate. I couldn’t understand, he would never do anything of the sort, as far as I knew, he was just a hardworking man. He went to prison in accordance with that Article. And we were left without a father. As the oldest—I was shy of fifteen at the time—I had to get a job. —Do you have brothers or sisters? At the time I did not have a brother, I had a sister Sophia, Sonya, born in 1929 and another sister Vera, born in 1933. Can you imagine how young they were, and we were left, as they say, on our own. This was a very difficult time for us; just after the famine, the Holodomor. It was difficult without a father; Mother had to provide for us all. Then, just before the war, I think, he was released. After the war began, they evacuated, but I was already in the army. They evacuated to Stalingrad [Volgograd] Oblast. But Father was with them, and they had an easier time. En route, my maternal grandmother, Bella, died. —From an illness? As they travelled, she was taken off the train and buried in the steppe. No grave. She succumbed to malnutrition, you can imagine the conditions on board, and she was elderly. We don’t know her final resting place, she was just taken off the train. And father—when they arrived to stanitsa Kalinino, I think—had my address, though my school had moved, and we corresponded regularly. When they left, I was no longer there, but near Moscow undergoing training at Svyatochinsk. It was the Red Army’s chemical training ground. Therefore, we corresponded regularly. In 1944, after the Battle of Stalingrad, when I was already serving in Belarus I got the news that Father had died and was also buried in these Stalingrad 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 2/14 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Rabovsky, Semyon full unedited video ID IS069.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4gq6r42q ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN steppes. After the war, they returned to Korosten. Mother went to work in a factory. She worked as a messenger. We had nothing left, so she was given . As for the relatives, Jewish acquaintances, all had been killed. And Father was from Berdichev [Berdychiv] from a Jewish village Pyatka, near Berdichev. All his relatives, his brother lived there, but no one survived. —Did you find out already after the war? Yes, when I returned to Korosten, having been wounded in September 1945—I had been demobilized, deemed unfit for military service—they were already there. They were given a room. When I returned they had nothing of their own. I had no profession except a highschool diploma and two years of military school. We were paupers. So, I registered with the military recruitment office and was offered to continue my service with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, as they were setting up a POW camp. Of course, I gladly accepted. This has probably saved everyone. I worked in the camp until 1950. In 1950, German Chancellor Adenauer came to negotiate the release of their prisoners, and our camp was transferred to Vorkuta. I went with it in 1950 and continued serving in these POW camps. In 1948 my son Iosif was born, on 20 August. Eight days later . My wife and her surviving sister, who had also been evacuated, joined me. My wife worked with me in the camp, she was a pharmacist. They circumcised my son on the eighth day. But it became known somehow—we had many friends—and I was summoned to the Party committee. I risked being expelled from the Party, and our party cell had indeed decided on it. Can you imagine, being expelled from the Party was like a death sentence for me. I could never work again, never. But, as they say, the world is not without good people. The political department in Kiev [Kyiv] gave me a severe reprimand but they kept me in the Party, provided I went to Vorkuta, and so I did. A major, a political officer, was going there, too. It had only been five years since my acceptance to the Party. This is one episode. The second episode following the one about my father’s arrest. One is from before the war, another is from post-war years. And then . Shall I continue? —Why don’t we go back to the war years. Oh? —You missed the war years. So, when I graduated from the military school in 1941 . —What was the name of the school? 2021 © BLAVATNIK ARCHIVE FOUNDATION PG 3/14 BLAVATNIKARCHIVE.ORG DIGITAL COLLECTIONS ITEM TRANSCRIPT Rabovsky, Semyon full unedited video ID IS069.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4gq6r42q ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN The school was then called Volsk Military Chemical School of the Soviet Army. The fact is, just before the war some of the cadets from our infantry school were made lieutenants and sent to serve in infantry units. And the infantry chemical defense system was being formed. The remaining cadets, still young boys, not yet eighteen years of age like me, were transferred to Volsk, to the village of Shikhany. We continued our studies there, being trained as specialists in chemical defense, the use of flamethrowers and so on. Our training was intense, because there was little time. Especially considering that the Germans were assembling chemical units; ostensibly they wanted to attack. As I said, we graduated in September 1941 and were immediately sent to the Southeastern Front near Kharkov [Kharkiv] at the disposal of the Kharkov Military District. I was assigned to a newly formed chemical defense battalion, the 76th Separate Battalion. —And you found out about the start of the war when you were already at that school, right? When the war started, I was already at that school. I’ll tell you, when the war began we were near Moscow in Pustosh. That school was being formed there and later called Volsk School. We got transferred there, and that’s where I found out that the war had begun. I knew there would be a war, even before it began. Because we were stationed in Krasnoarmeysk [Pulyny] near Berdichev, and our studies were honed to a clash with the Germans. All the shooting targets were fashioned after German uniforms. This was in 1940, mind you. Also I had a hunch, because when in 1939 our forces liberated Western Belarus and Eastern Poland, refugees poured in from there. They were mostly Jews. And we already knew what the Germans were doing to the Jews. And although this was not advertised, they spoke about it. There were Germans among them who had fled to Poland. And when I was at school, everything pointed to the fact that the Germans would attack the Soviet Union. Even despite all those peace treaties already in place, the Ribbentrop Pact and all. They said the attack was sudden, but they knew. Then, for the first time, we received our secret small arms, the so-called SVT, Tokarev’s self- loading rifle, for the loss of which one could get court-martialled. But they turned out to be worthless, not adapted to field conditions. If a little bit of sand gets in, they stop working. Well, better not talk about it. Our rifle remained the best weapon. Later submachine guns and other arms appeared. This is what happened before the war. As for the actual start of the war, I was at the chemical warfare school. I didn’t know much, but I knew what was coming, about German atrocities and such, I saw it with my own eyes what they were doing. Well, I was in this newly-formed battalion. And the war began. Kharkov was captured twice: after it had been abandoned, it was recaptured as a result of our offensive in 1941-42. And it seemed the Germans were about to use chemical weapons against our country. A group of expert officers was formed to carry out reconnaissance in the German rear.