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Home , Southern Front (RSFSR), Southern Group of Forces

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Evsey Epshtein. Full unedited interview, 2009

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TABLE OF CONTENTS ITEM TRANSCRIPT

ENGLISH TRANSLATION 2 CITATION & RIGHTS 13

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Evsey Epshtein. Full unedited interview, 2009

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ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

TRANSCRIPT ENGLISH TRANSLATION Evsey Epshtein introduces himself and recounts what he calls his father’s “interesting fate.”

- Today is March 9, 2009. We are in Los Angeles meeting with a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. Please, introduce yourself, tell us about what you remember about your childhood and prewar life, about the family you grew up in, what schools you attended, what did your parents do, how you ended up in the Red Army and your war experience. Please.

My name is Epshtein, Evsey Semyonovich. I was born in Kharkov [Kharkiv] on April 6, 1923. My parents were Lyubov Evseevna and Semyon Faddeevich. My mother was a dentist and my father an accountant. My father had a very interesting fate. He was born to a large Jewish family and was the only boy among his siblings. All except one of the women had an education. My father also did not receive an education. He had a tense relationship with his mother. My grandmother – I do not remember her last name – but I do remember her as a very strict woman. My father fell in love with a very beautiful woman. She was very poor and my father’s parents were very rich – his father was a merchant in the first guild in Romny, in the Poltava oblast [now Sumy Oblast]. When my father said that he would marry this woman, my grandfather – this is from my mother – took a hundred rubles to bribe a local official – this was the 1880s – and my father was drafted into the army. He was not in the army for long, he caught a cold somewhere and returning home he knocked at the gate. My grandmother asked, who is it? It is me, Semyon. Are you going to marry her? Of course. Then I will not let you into the house. My father turned around, came for his beloved, and they got married in Kiev [Kyiv]. They had a daughter named Marietta, but unfortunately my father’s first wife soon passed away. She was a very sickly woman. He was left all alone with his daughter. Some time later my father was out for a stroll and found himself at the Kharkov train station, this is according to my mother, as my mother was passing through on her way to the Southern Front along with Red Army soldiers. She was a medic. He saw her and asked “Lyuba, what are you doing here?” She said she was going to the front. “Lyuba, get off the train.” He took her home, married her, and together they raised Marietta. This is how I have a half-sister, we are both my father’s children.

Years went by and my father had all sorts of jobs. First he was a welder, then an accountant. He worked with Anton Semyonovich Makarenko in the Dzerzhinsky Commune. He would bring me to Anton Semyonovich. I’ll tell you honestly, I was not well-behaved. He talked to me, threatened me, I was a little scared that he would take me to [a children's] colony and began to understand that it was unnecessary [to behave this way]. I studied at the 36th school in Kharkov. This school was where children of Ukraine’s entire government usually studied. There were children of Zatomsky, Petrovsky, Postyshev, Yakir, famous singers – Patorzhinsky and Litvinenko-Volgemut. I spent time with them all, although my closest relationship was with Petya Yakir. We lived on the same street, got together, visited each other, as usual.

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Evsey Epshtein. Full unedited interview, 2009

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We had some adventures…Petya took his father’s “Colt, we put two glasses on top of a fence, and opened fire. Guards came running and I received a good beating, but they were not allowed to touch him. Petya knocked [on my door] in the evening. I lived in the basement on the street – it was Veterenarna street, later Ivanov – he knocked on the window and said, “my dad is calling you.” I said, I’m afraid, I won’t go. He persuaded me. We went. He asked, did you shoot? I said, it was not me, it was Petya. We were boys. “Do you like shooting?” We wanted to try. “Then come on Sunday, we will go to a shooting range.” He put us in his car, he had a car from the GAZ AA, it was called “Kozlik.” He took us to a shooting range for Red Army men in Kharkov. He gave us small-caliber rifles and we could shoot as much as we wanted. We shot off a mountain of ammunition. In ’33 the government moved to Kiev and Yakir's mansion was taken over by [Ivan Naumovich] Dubovoi, a [Red Army] commander. He had four rhombuses [designating rank – equivalent to a Colonel General]. He had an enormous red beard. However, he was also repressed. Like Yakir, he was executed. Instead of him, Timoshenko commanded the troops in Ukraine and Crimea, later he was a marshal. His daughter, Irina, went to this school and studied with us. I read about her only after the war, she did not behave very well, especially with Stalin’s son, Vasily. So they wrote, I do not know.

I was transferred from the 36th school to school number 100 on Chaikovsky Street, which I graduated in ’41. June 21 was the graduation party. [We were] boys, we drank a little, of course, danced, we talked…In the morning my mother woke me up and said, “Son, get up, war.” I had no idea what war [really] meant. However, since my year – the ’23 – was on the draft list, I went to the military enlistment office. This was the Kharkov Kaganovichsky military enlistment office. They told me to wait a while and they would send me to study in a military school. They referred me. They gave me documents, a pass to Sevastopol, they referred me to the Sevastopol Anti-Aircraft Artillery School, where I, an eighteen-year-old boy, went from the Southern Station to the Crimea. My mother, father, sister and my friend saw me off. Along the way, I was first bombed at the Sinelnikovo Station. This was my baptism of fire. Disappointment came soon [after]. When I arrived in Sevastopol on the Ship’s Side, where the school was located, the school as such was no longer there. It was a two-year school. Graduates went into the ranks as lieutenants. Those who transferred for further studies were loaded onto trains and sent somewhere. Those who arrived they did not know what to do with them because the railway, according to some of those in charge, was already cut off by the Germans in the Zaporozhye region.

Well, where [should they] put us? We were thin eighteen-year-old boys. I found myself on the cruiser “Chervona Ukraina.” In general, they could not make a sailor out of me. The old-timers, they served for five years, were physically strong, their fists were like my head. Healthy guys. Naturally, they laughed at us, go up the flagstaff and bring down the steam. The flagstaff was the highest point on the mast. From there we were quickly written off to the naval infantry – the 5th brigade of naval infantry. I received a bullet wound in the arm near Balaklava, was in the hospital and heard a conversation between doctors that they needed to amputate. I understood what amputate meant, my mother’s a doctor. When they came up to me, I said no,

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I would not let them amputate. They did something, operated on me, then they put me in a cast. Then – it was a cast up to here. The hand was like this (shows at the shoulder level) and that’s how I was sent to Novorossiysk, where there were many wounded, on a destroyer. Then I went to through several hospitals and found myself in Ufa. In Ufa was the Sevastopol Anti-Aircraft Artillery School.

- What year was this?

This was ’42. This was in Ufa, the capital of Bashkiria. When they discharged me, they said that…we were given these papers that said we were cadets of the Sevastopol Anti-Aircraft Artillery School and one witty guy said, if you survive, you’ll find the school and they’ll take you. With this piece of paper, I arrived at the school, which was near the prison in Ufa. I was accepted but told that graduation was coming up soon. Four months later I put on a lieutenant’s uniform with two cubes [designating rank]. I brought a picture. A skinny…boy. That is how I began my officer’s life. Initially I went to the 750th Anti-Aircraft Regiment, where 80% were girls. For me, a boy of 19, with my looks – redheaded, freckled, and so on, during my school years’ children were cruel in this regard. Somehow I grew used to it. I was commander of an 85mm gun platoon. We trained there and there was also fire practice. Fire practice took place at the training grounds. A high-speed SB bomber rose and dragged a cone behind itself. The platoon I commanded – instrument operators and all – on my command they inserted the ballistic drum, did everything, and when they told me they were all ready, I waved the flag: fire. Four guns fired, but they did not hit the cone, but under the tail of the plane. You can imagine what the general who was there did to me. He told me things that I cannot repeat. After we were done, thank God, I was sent to the Southwestern Front. Me and another ten officers.

I joined the 38th Anti-Aircraft Division of the reserve of the supreme high command. We were formed in Penza. The division had three regiments and was then joined by another regiment of small-caliber guns under the command of Major Zhigulin, which was formed in Kuntsevo. We were thrown [into battle] outside Kursk. Not all the batteries found themselves outside Kursk, but ours did. The fighting was terrible, it was horrible but we endured and survived. And our journey began. We walked along the south. From Kursk we walked to the Dnieper. We were supposed to force the Dnieper in the Cherkassy [Cherkasy] area. I was quite young and tried not to get into any type of trouble but for some reason part of our division, including a machine-gun company and my battery, were sent north of Cherkassy – as if we were a distraction from the main landing [operation]. When our command, apparently, received some type of indication that this landing was supposed to be a distraction, I was ordered to send a machine-gun platoon to the left bank. Two battalions of SS troops were [arrayed] against us.

It was horrible, of course, very horrible. We, of course, crossed over. I sent one guy by the scruff of the

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Evsey Epshtein. Full unedited interview, 2009

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ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN neck to the left bank and, interestingly, I simply do not remember this episode. When we met in Cherkassy after the war, he recognized me, apparently because I have an unusual hair color – red. And he yelled to his wife, “Look at him! He dragged me over the Dnieper.” I said, I do not remember this, not at all. We escorted the troops. Our division had four regiments. One regiment had 76mm guns – heavy artillery. They were used against tanks, there is a high [chance for] penetration by the sub-caliber shell. We had 37mm guns. Our shooting ceiling was 3 kilometers. Since we had to cover the infantry, we were almost next to the trenches. All [German] flights and bombings were around us because German aviation tactics, as well as our own, were to suppress air defense assets. Naturally, we had losses, we had wounded. I received three wounds. But we advanced slowly. We forced the Dnieper, moved on. We walked through the Zhitomir [Zhytomyr] area. We went into and through Moldavia to the Prut River, the town of Skulyany [Sculeni]. We were there for half-a-year until the general offensive in August of ’44. We lived quite calmly there, except for during May, when the Germans dropped leaflets-booklets early in the morning – [describing] how well their captives live, how they play in the orchestra, how they practice boxing, how they are fed. And [included] a pass: present this, please, go there. This was the first demarche. The second plane dropped more leaflets, where it was reported that Hitler gave an order to encircle Soviet troops, that is the Red Army, in Moldavia and destroy them. And then…a terrible situation began.

There were 500-700 German sorties per day. Initially they attacked anti-aircraft units. We were somewhat lucky because my battery was on a steep bank of the Prut. They flew Junkers 87 dive bombers, they flew over to the rear, got into a circle and then the first went into a dive, bombed, left the dive and went off to the side. My friend, the 2nd battery commander Voluisky, Ivan, and I agreed that he would be on one side of the Prut and I would be on the other. I met [the dive bombers] here. If I could not knock them down, then he would hit them as they exited [their dive] as they seemed to hang [in the air]. That is how we…fired. It was horrible. [The fighting] was so heavy that the guns were glowing white. These guns [fired] – 180 rounds per minute. When we were firing, the spare barrels lay nearby. When the barrel became too hot, it cannot be fired from because the shell will explode inside. [You need to] turn two keys 90º and throw the barrel away with pincers so that it cools down and you put the spare in its place. At one point, when the division commander arrived with his retinue, the regiment commander came, he said “Tell them to fry us some potatoes.” When they [the Germans] attacked, they ran to the cellar. So we could not. I was told, the claws of the extractor that throw out the cartridge sleeve, broke down on the first, then the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth – all of them, we could not shoot. And here is the last one, a diving Junkers 87, he turned, opened his canopy, his leather gloves were so big, and he showed me…And I stand there and look. What could I do? Shoot at him from my pistol?

We remained there until August of ’44, and then on August 20th an order came to go to Iasi. This was Romania. We entered Iasi without a fight and the Germans withdrew from there. When we were moving along a very good road toward Bucharest, suddenly a U2 flew over us, landed on the road and a general

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ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN existed [the plane]. Well, the regimental commander went over there. He says, “The Germans have broken through into the Carpathians in the vicinity of the town of Khushi.” This is the [enemy’s] Iasi-Kishinev group. So, the task of our division is to delay them. But this is ridiculous. We are gunners, not infantry. But an order is an order. We turned around and went toward Khushi. There was no war, [just] silence. We put the guns in high corn and see flying above us a Junkers-88. Then we realized he was probably flying to get the top command staff. We did not even have time to shoot at him. The Germans began to advance in the evening. The corn was high and I heard the machine gun that was ahead – I was our first battery, behind me was the second, third and fourth batteries – a shout and submachine gun fire. Later I found out that the guys behind the machine gun were killed. And I heard: halt, halt, halt. I crept out to the highway – the corn was high – and saw a crowd of Germans coming. They were pulling a gun...Since we were connected to the regimental commander by telephone, I reported to him. He said, “Do not open fire while we pull out Trusov’s fourth battery. When we have prepared it we will [issue] the command.” The Germans came under flanking fire from our side, and Trusov’s battery hit them head-on. You know, it’s hard to even imagine how these tracers were flying between us and the guns. Each shell in a small-caliber anti-aircraft installation had a tracer, and when the shell flies you see where it is flying according to the tracer. My guys captured one of the soldiers. He was without a coat, in German army trousers. It turned out he spoke Russian. He was a Vlasovite. I was so angry…I was a boy, twenty years old…I said shoot him and it’s done. He was shot. They shot him.

German tanks arrived in the morning. They stood on a hillock. They could clearly see us and they set fire to two of my cars, two Studebakers. The regimental commander ordered, “Guys, fall back as best you can.” What we could we hooked up, threw in DShK machine guns – it was very heavy – and we got out of there. There is a town, Vaslui, in Hungary. The wounded were transported there. The army was commanded by General [Konstantin Apollonovich] Koroteev and because we abandoned those positions and left they wanted to send us to a military tribunal. There were some among us, especially the deputy regimental commander for political affairs, Major Filatov, who, as he said, hid his party card in his boot and ran away from there…well, let God judge him. Koroteev ordered us to go there on tanks, bury the dead, and retrieve the artillery guns, which we did. The Germans were no longer there because infantry came to meet us and blocked them [off]. The Germans could not go toward the Carpathian [mountains].

While we were retreating from this battle, everything was quiet in Romania. The Romanian King Mihai crossed over to the side of the Red Army and liberated the passage in the Transylvanian Alps. And we went on to Budapest. We were not allowed into Bucharest. Such a ragged Red Army could not be allowed [into the city]. But we still drove through, we were on automobiles. We were just curious to see what was happening there. From the field road we drove around this area which we were not allowed through. Took a look. The city was whole. Then we crossed the Transylvanian Alps into Hungary. You know, it was a colossal impression [on us]. There was no war [here]. The Romanians liberated this highway, but there

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ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN were sheer cliffs on the right and left. Of course, if there were tanks above us we would not have come out alive. We drove very carefully until the city of Timisoara, there is such a city in Hungary (in Romania), we took up positions and waited for further orders. What did the Red Army command do? The Red Army command transferred the Romanians, who crossed over to the side of the Red Army, to German combat aircraft. That is, those Junkers and Henschels were now controlled by Romanian pilots. They drew English signs on them. When we spoke with our command at a meeting, [we asked] how will we know [the difference]? He might be coming at me from the flank and I will not see what he has painted on his wings or on the side. We determine [the aircraft] by the noise of the motor. Motor, ears, eyes – that is all we have to go on. Scouts reported that they heard engine noise and I saw a Junkers-52 behind the mountain. This is a transport aircraft. It has three motors – two on the wings and one in front. We shot it down. We were so happy…we shot down a plane. The orderly said to me, “The division commander [wants to see] you.” I was so pleased, joyful…we shot it down. “Shot it down? I have information that he fell five or six kilometers from you. Take some people, a car, take a look and report back.” We left. We opened the corrugated door with a crowbar and the dead lay there. High or mid-level officers…They died. Tribunal…I arrived [back] and reported. He said, “Son, just your luck. They did not [submit a] request for the flight and did not give the signal for ‘friendly aircraft.’” What should I do? “Nothing, keep fighting.” Why this happened is because in the same area, in the Tissa region, there was some division – they shot down an American “flying fortress.” Well …When the crew jumped out with their parachutes and arrived in Tissa, they shot them. Took their watches, their boots, and everything else. Every allied aviation pilot had a red booklet on the left side it was written in English and on the right it was written in Russian. Allied pilot so-and-so; in case of a forced landing, the assembly point is such-and-such. The Americans said, “We are not interested in the plane, where is the crew?” Counterintelligence looked into it…we heard that the [Soviet] commander was shot. Whether he was guilty or not I do not presume to judge, but this is one episode.

Then we are on our way from Timisoara to the city of Kecskemet, which is 70 kilometers from Budapest. Around the New Year we received an order to move on Budapest. We moved on Budapest. Soviet forces crossed the Danube to the south and we came up with…We, three batteries, covered the landings, that is, we shot over the landing troops with our small-caliber guns along the shore. The fighting in Budapest was very heavy. This was street fighting. The command decided to follow the 62nd Army’s command in Stalingrad: infantrymen and one artillery gun. The guns shot at the windows and the infantrymen jumped [through]. That was how we moved. The regimental commander called on me – I was already the chief of the regiment’s reconnaissance – and said: “Here is the infantry lieutenant and you. If you get to the Parliament, a Gold Star [Her of the Soviet Union for you]. But if you do not make it…” An order is an order. We went. I was shot after an hour. I was shot through my leg. The people in Budapest lived in cellars and the buildings were continuous only broken up by streets. Between the houses they created a type of manhole and residents sat with candles with their children, old men and old women. As we were moving from one cellar to another, someone fired a shot. The [guy] in front was hit in the arm and then I went through and he shot me in this foot, I could not walk. I was taken out of there, sent to a hospital in Salnok,

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ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN but you won't find me in the hospital records.

Then we moved on. I left the hospital. In Ráckeresztúr – these were brick factories near the entrance to Budapest – a sniper missed, I have a scar here. Then we went to the right bank, Szekesfehervar is there on Lake Balaton. Two German tank brigades squeezes us so hard that we barely escaped from there. I was with a battery left to guard a wooden bridge, the only one that was created by the sappers from the left bank – this was Pest, Margaret Island is in the middle of Budapest and from Margaret Island to Buda – this was the wooden bridge. The commander said: “[They will] bomb us.” This was the only crossing [left]. What did the Germans do? The Danube current is very fast – 5 meters/second. On the wooden bridge there were boxes made for machine guns. Scouts sat 500-700 meters away. They watched the water during the day, and at night the searchlights were lit up because the Germans were launching naval mines expecting them to blow up the bridge. There were seven bridges in Budapest. All were blown up, only this one bridge remained. We lived there for three weeks, after Budapest was already taken. There were all sorts of events. A lady in a fur coat with an interpreter approached me and said: “Mister captain, I’m the mistress of this cabaret. Allow me to open it [for business].” I was a twenty or twenty-one-years-old kid. I said, go ahead. If the commandant of Budapest knew that some young captain…Imagine what they would have done to me. When we went with my wife on a tourist trip to Czechoslovakia and Hungary, I showed her this place. Then we went to Czechoslovakia, the city of Brno and near Prague we finished our combat path.

fter, we were sent to Bulgaria, the city of Radomir. It’s in the mountains. There were airfields and Americans were landing on them. We saw it all from the mountain. We read in the newspaper Pravda [Truth]: TASS is authorized to announce that the reports from foreign agents that Red Army troops have concentrated on the Turkish border do not correspond to reality. And we were urgently taken off from the mountains at night and loaded onto platforms. I do not recall how many tunnels there were, and the locomotives with oil…we were all black. We were taken to Sofia and then the division was disbanded. I was appointed commander of a battery in Romania, in Constanta. I did not want to serve there. The people were new and I felt a kind of inner dislike [toward them]. I was called by the head of the division’s political department and he said: “I see you are something…different. Do you want to study?” Of course. “I suggest that you go to the Red Army’s Higher Officer’s School of Air Defense in Yevpatoria.” With pleasure. I handed over the battery and left for Yevpatoria. Along the way I drove into Kharkov. My mother and father returned from evacuation and my mother said to me: “Son, try to demobilize, you’ll be expelled anyway. Four wounds.” I could not lift my hand, [I had a] bullet here.

I graduated from the Higher Officer School, Battery Commanders Faculty. I took part in army competitions. I played volleyball for the Kharkov youth team. I played volleyball after the war in Constanta, I played

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ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN volleyball…I arrived and wrote a report. You cannot imagine what happened to the division commander, what he said to me – we sent you to study...I told him, I have four wounds, maybe I’ll serve for another year and then [what]? I will be a janitor – discharge me. Go to the commission. I went to the military commission. They assigned me an invalid 3rd class. When I brought him this piece of paper, he said, how much did you pay? Well, should I get undressed and show you the holes in my body? One officer came and said, “Guys, when I passed by the headquarters of the Southern Group of Forces, there was a written announcement: Deputy of the Supreme Soviet Marshal of the Soviet Union Tolbukhin is receiving voters. Let’s go to him.” We went, there were eight of us. He accepted us. He put us in a large study and began to ask everyone, why. He invited us all to go to the academy. When it came to me, he said, I would suggest the Artillery Academy for you. We gave him our reports. He wrote, discharge [on them all]. We crossed the square and the head of the personnel department was summoned, a lieutenant colonel soon came out, he took our papers from us. Then General Bykov comes out. He told us in Russian, what did we do and so on, then wait. There were these clever people who plied a clerk, who created the lists, in the restaurant for two days with drink with the final result that we were demobilized.

We were solemnly seeing off the first officers, demobilization. In a park, there is a table, a red cloth, and the demobilized are sitting there. They are all summoned. I am summoned. I reported. “What are you doing here? Are you deceiving me? Well, all right, go study.” I left for Kharkov. I arrived on August 15. Admission to the Medical Institute was on August 1st. I tell you honestly, I did not know anything. My mother picked up some books. I came to take exams in my uniform. I sat down and waited. We wrote an essay in the anatomical theater. Young guys were worried…should they write about Pushkin or someone else. I wait for an optional topic, which was “The Five-Year Plan.” I knew nothing about it. I wrote one-and- a-half pages, checked, there seemed to be no errors. I go down and an old man is sitting there. Later, I found out this was the head of the Latin Department. He said, “What, your honor, you’ve already finished?” I was confused. What do you mean, your honor? “You see, I was a staff captain in the First Imperialist War.” I said, well, we are colleagues, can you check my essay? “Of course.” He found two commas somewhere and gave me a “four [out of five].” Then I went to take an oral Russian [exam], I did not know anything at all. The door opens, a tall man comes in, walks around me once or twice and says to the examiner, “Have you no shame? Look, the man has yet to take off his uniform. Give him a four, let him go.” They gave me a four. The last exam was physics, for which I was a little prepared. I knew the theory, but I could not solve the problem. I told the examiner, “I can answer the theory, but I can only solve the problem halfway.” She said, let’s do it together. In short, I was given a “three,” and I entered the medical institute.

I studied at the medical institute for six years. I was involved in all sorts of party work there. I was the party organizer of the group, the chairman of the institute’s sports committee, the editor-in-chief of the institute newspaper, for which I was expelled from the party. This was, of course, for me…a shock. I did not understand how they could [do that]. Here is the essence of it. At the time there were no printing

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ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN machines. We took three sheets of Whatman [paper] and the typists printed them for us. Here is one article, “The teaching staff of the Kharkov Medical Institute is studying the classic works of Marxism- Leninism.” A list follows, V. I. Lenin – Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Communism [should have been Capitalism not Communism]…it was printed. Can you imagine. Stalin was still alive. The regional party committee read it. There was a knock on my basement in the evening and I was told to urgently go to the committee. I came [there]. I was expelled from the party.

- What year was this?

1950. My wife was already pregnant. My wife finished in ’51 and I finished in ’52. And here was a party meeting. The organization was big – three hundred something people. They report that the Bureau has decided to expel [me], and this speech was connected with the “Voice of America”…all sorts of things. Who will speak first? The head of the Department of Marxism-Leninism. He confirmed the bureau’s decision, called me all kinds of names. The second – expel, the third – expel. Then the chair of the history of medicine, Petrov, took the floor. He fastened his tunic – a frontline soldier – [puts] his glasses on his forehead, puts down a frontline bag, “Comrade chairman, look, who signed this newspaper?” the chairman turns…Party Committee Secretary Tkachenko. “Here, sit him next to Epshtein. And who else endorsed it? Oh, the deputy party committee of the evening faculty Malaya, the hero of socialist labor…sit her down.” He began to tell them that it was a mistake. “But you arranged a circus, look at who came: the representative of the district committee, the representative of the city committee, the representative of the oblast committee.” He did not say that Jews were being beaten, that it was an anti-Semitic attack. Just then newspapers were filled with all sorts of things. It ended in the fact that I was reprimanded without it being entered into the record card. My Red Army-frontline soldiers did not allow me to be offended.

I graduated from the medical institute and went to receive my appointment. My wife had already graduated from the institute, she gave birth to a son and went to Slavyansk [Sloviansk], in the Donetsk oblast. Her parents lived there. Her father was the chief engineer of the road department, David Izrailevich. Her mother, Tonya Yudelevna, worked in road management. When I went to receive my appointment, the Deputy Minister, Baran, looked…”Oh, I want to send you to the ‘Slava’ whaling flotilla. You served on the Black Sea.” What will I do [there]? I have passed my specialization in forensic medicine. Will I be opening up whales? “You – he said – don’t be so smart.” My professor said he wanted me to go to a residency. “Well, we are preparing national cadres.” I was furious. I said, what national cadre am I? He was a little embarrassed. I said, send me to Slavyansk, where I have a wife and child. “I do not have a place [for you] in Slavyansk.” I said, excuse me, there are 25 seats in the Stalin (Donetsk) oblast, I am the third. However, the rule was if you did not sign off on your appointment, you were not allowed to take the state examination. And I left. On the second day they called me again and I said, no, I won’t sign. And only on the fourth day did the director of the institute, Konanenko, said: “I cannot do anything with this fool.” I said, you know, Ivan Filippovich, you were the Minister of Health in Kiev, and he is your deputy, can you not tell him that he

Evsey Epshtein. Full unedited interview, 2009

ID LA006.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4s756n0f

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN is behaving poorly? “I cannot do anything. I found you a place, go to Voroshilovgrad oblast. Sign. You will go to Kiev and change it.” In short, I arrived in Kiev, changed it, and I organized a forensic medical examination in Slavyansk. I worked there for 42 years as head of forensic medical examination. The party city committee sent me to be a part-time deputy of the city hospital. I taught at a pedagogical school and in a medical school. Thank God, in ’94 I left. I feel very good.

In Donetsk, the authorities called: go to the executive committee, we are presenting you the Order of the Badge of Honor. I received the documents, the first secretary of the city committee signed the award lists and I brought them to Donetsk…I did not receive the order. That was my life. I have two children. My son graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute, the Space Department. My daughter graduated from the Leningrad Pediatric Institute. My wife, Lira, is an obstetrician. I have five grandchildren; a great- granddaughter was [recently] born. My grandson, Anton, is fighting in Iraq.

- During the war you fought, were injured…then you became a doctor. If you look back, from the doctor’s point of view, what impact did the war and what you went through in your youth have on the rest of your life? Was there any psychological impact or were there new worries and all that horror receded into the background?

No, I still dream about the war. As a boy I was very undisciplined and my parents had troubles because of me. When I came to the Red Army, when I became an officer, when I had other worries, I completely reconsidered my life because I had 120 people in my battery. Some were from prison, some from the camps. When I received my first party of former prisoners, I formed them up and said: “So, guys, this is war. For theft, rape and other [crimes] – I’ll shot you myself.” As my mother said, all of this made a man out of me. When I arrived to one of my aunt’s in Leningrad with my wife, she said: “How could you go along with this delinquent?” the war left on me an imprint of decency, I paid attention to people. I, being a forensic expert…this was the second [world] war. This was not a clinic or hospital where they do injections and treat [patients]. This is a fight against banditry, murderers, and rapists. I personally enjoyed a certain authority among the criminal world. When I saw one killer, he said to me: “You know, doctor, they say good things about you in prison.” I knew that no one would touch me. Nobody touched me for 41 years of work as an expert.

- Thank you very much.

If I did as you wanted…

- You did what many wanted.

Well, I’m already old, I’ll be 86 years old in a month.

Evsey Epshtein. Full unedited interview, 2009

ID LA006.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4s756n0f

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

- Old age is not measured by years.

I know. I have cecum cancer, I was operated on, chemo. Prostate cancer, I was operated on, chemo and radiation [therapy]. I believe they removed everything they possibly could. But I live! I have five grandchildren, now a great-granddaughter has appeared. The day after tomorrow she arrives from Alaska.

- Thank you again.

Evsey Epshtein. Full unedited interview, 2009

ID LA006.interview PERMALINK http://n2t.net/ark:/86084/b4s756n0f

ITEM TYPE VIDEO ORIGINAL LANGUAGE RUSSIAN

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