CHAPTER 10

When I turned 17 on the 23rd of September 1931 I went through a strange crisis. Some sort of inner torments pursued me: I kept blaming myself for having achieved nothing by the age of 17, for having done nothing of significance and for not having "become someone". I felt so awful that I thought I should put my tormenting thoughts down in writing. I thought it might help me to find some relief. So, I started writing my second diary in a mathematics notebook. I wrote it all down, but apparently having expressed my thoughts and doubts on paper did not help much and I spoke about it to Mother, hinting about my sufferings and doubts. She did not comment on this right away but waited for an appropriate moment and said: "Lyuba, why do these thoughts cause you such pain? It is just plain unfulfilled ambition!" She did not add anything. It made me think and I checked and re-checked my thoughts and feelings. I came to the conclusion that she was right. In a way this freed me from my torments: after all, being ambitious is not really an attractive trait of character, so I better try and overcome it instead of going on "feeding" on my own torments.

Gradually they disappeared, but they left a trace that lasted for a long time. I remembered that crisis and the fact that the ambitions I felt (I felt them often enough later on too) had to be fought and not nurtured. Mother's remark made in an almost by-the-way manner became very important to me.

Fourth Year at High-school

During that period I did not just go to school and became an underground Pioneer leader, I also engaged in another form of illegal activity. We produced and distributed at school an illegal magazine called "The Ventilator" which was directed against the "reactionary tendencies" in our high-school. We printed it in secret on a rotary printer in the evenings and distributed it secretly at school. This was also how we printed various leaflets and slogans connected with festive events related to the Revolution.

One day at school, during recess, after I pasted one of such leaflets on the classroom wall, Fima Liven came up and tore it down. I, without thinking about it too much, slapped him in the face. He turned red, but did not react. There were three or four people in the classroom when this happened and I realized that at least partially I "blew my cover", even though everyone knew what my political inclinations were at the time. I was sure that no-one will say anything to the teachers.

Many years later Fima was wounded in the war and was lying in hospital after having his leg amputated. He wrote me a letter where he said, among other things: "I hope I have now vindicated myself and don't have to feel ashamed anymore because of that slap in the face."

In addition to all these activities we also had a secret group where we studied Historic Materialism (Historic Materialism is one of the basics of Marxism - Tr). Following the instructions received from my Komsomol superiors I organized this group after recruiting the "most progressive" of my classmates. Apart from me it contained Lyalya Vinograd, Yerakhmiel Maler and Lyuba Fishberg. We met once a week and an excellent propaganda-maker came "to teach us sense"…. In the meantime reports about me were accumulating at the offices of the secret police. Years later this is what was written in a document I received from the Central State Historic Archives: "According to the records of Political Administration of Bourgeois Latvia, Eidus L.L. was an active member of the school section of the Latvian Youth Komsomol Organization and was on record there as a representative of a Jewish high-school. She participated in illegal Communist meetings, where the work of the Communist movement in schools and distribution of Communist literature had been discussed."

This is our fourth year high-school class, the 1931-1932 school year. I am in the second row, fourth on the left. (By that time I did not smile when photographed. I thought this would create a frivolous impression.) Lyuba Fishberg in on my left and Hanze Slovin is next. Lyalya Vinograd is in the top left spot and Y. Maler is the top right. Fanya Berkovich (Eidus) is in the third row, fourth from the right. Rosa Reshtein (Lifshits) is on her left and Fima Liven is in the third row.

The Drama Studio

During this period a drama studio somehow came into being and not only was it officially registered but it also staged performances for quite a large audience. I learned about it from "our crowd": members of the underground and the almost-underground who were either actors or other kinds of participants in the studio. So, I became an "actress" once again.

The head of the studio was a fellow called Glezer. He came from Lithuania and he became our tireless stage director, music composer, head of the orchestra and even, I think, painter of the stage sets. He staged a grandiose performance, "The Machine Destroyers", in the style of the famous theatre director V. Meyerhold. The play was a huge success and it was staged in a real theatre. I played a boy who was asking his grandfather for bread and also, in another scene, I danced together with Fanya a very grim "hunger dance".

We also staged another play called "The Revue". I danced with a whole group of girls, all of them dressed in shorts, vests, appropriate make-up and wearing top hats, and we did some classic "revue" dancing. Then came a festive evening dedicated to the writer Sholom-Aleikhem. It contained mass scenes and group declamation. There were also various evening performances with different programs. In one of them I recited poems for children by S.Marshak and A.Barto (popular Soviet children poets).

Then we started rehearsing a play about a "kolkhoz" (a Soviet collective settlement), something like "Plot No. 62". I was supposed to have played one of the main parts, but the new stage director took a liking to some other girl and gave my part to her. I suffered a lot because of that injustice, but he did marry her later. (They now have two grown sons and a grandson).

The work of the drama studio was not conducted in peaceful atmosphere: plays were sometimes banned, we were ordered to leave our premises and had to look for new halls to perform. I shall write further on how it all ended and how it affected me personally.

In the meantime it was all very interesting: meeting lots of young men and women, participating in rehearsals, text readings and "creative debates". After the studio was closed down it "went underground". We staged Sholom-Aleikhem's play "200 000" in private houses. The rehearsals took place in private houses as well and one of them even took place at our house, at No. 5 Blauman St., when Iren was about 7-8 months' old. … These activities were all part of the so-called illegal "anti-Fascist movement" conducted under the guidance of the Communist party and involving people from different sectors of the society.

Graduating from High-school

New instructions came into force in 1932 and according to them all high-school students who had good marks (no less than '4', which was a good mark while '5' was an excellent one) were to be exempt from final graduation examinations. Most of my marks were excellent ones and only our Mathematics teacher, Mr. Reshin, who suspected what my political views were and who suspected that I was connected with underground activities, gave me a '4' "out of spite". I was there when he was putting it down on paper and I must have shown my surprise, to which he blurted out: "One just cannot do all things at once if one wants to get a '5'!" In any case, I knew what marks will be found in my high-school graduation certificate and I knew that I will not have to sit for any exams. I could now choose my way in life. However, things worked out a little differently than what I thought at the time.

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