A Chosen Few - Mark Kurlansky [82]
Her choice of him now made sense to Turski. Now he understood that she had chosen him because she wanted to find a Jew. After they had lived together for thirty-five years and raised a daughter together, Turski was still convinced of this. When it was suggested to him that perhaps she simply fell in love with him, he persisted, “Well, I hope so. But there were so many handsome young men surrounding her, and she chose me! I understood that this was because she wanted to have a Jewish boy.”
IN THE EARLY 1950s both Jakub Gutenbaum and Barbara Gora were studying in Moscow on Soviet scholarships. Foreign students were given much higher living allowances than the Soviet students, and their lives were relatively comfortable. They could buy the food in the shops that Soviets could not afford, and attend museums, the opera, and the ballet. Student life in Moscow was pleasant, except for occasional signs that all was not well in the Soviet Union. A Soviet student was taken away from Gutenbaum's class and never again seen.
Gutenbaum and Gora knew each other because he was dating one of her roommates. But they had very different experiences. Gutenbaum never changed his name. He had already learned that a face like his would identify him faster than a piece of paper. So he filled out his papers correctly, writing “Polish citizen, Jewish nationality.”
But Barbara Gora, the former Irene Hochberg, had learned to pass as a Pole. If things turned, no one even knew she was Jewish. Why should anyone think Barbara Gora was Jewish? It was rumored that some in her group were clandestine Jews. Barbara even knew of one, a friend from the Ukraine. Once Barbara was even asked how she had survived the war, so she knew that some of her fellow students suspected her. But she had been playing this game well for a decade, and she was confident.
On November 7, 1952, like thousands of Muscovites, she walked to Red Square and saw Stalin on the reviewing stand. Teams of experts around the world examined photos of that event, not only to see who was standing close and who was kept far away, but to search Stalin's face for signs of rumored illness, both physical and mental. But Barbara Gora simply went and saw Stalin. It was the last time he was seen in public.
On January 13, 1953, it was announced that nine top doctors from the elite Kremlin staff had misused their professional skills to murder two of Stalin's top aides. Although it was not mentioned that six of the nine doctors were Jewish, it was pointed out that these six had connections with that great bourgeois Jewish conspiracy, the American Joint Distribution Committee. The doctors, it was discovered, were part of a Zionist spy network that was plotting against the Soviet state. The Soviet press ran regular articles warning the citizenry against Zionist connivers and especially Jewish doctors. The people were advised to be on the lookout for these doctor-poisoners, who were allegedly committing ever more fantastic crimes, including changing children into animals. There was nothing more dangerous than contact with a Jew. Gentiles with Jewish spouses were encouraged to get divorces. Some did; others simply staged divorces for appearances.
Suddenly, Jakub Gutenbaum felt as though the air around him had lost its oxygen. No one wanted to come near him, talk to him, or be seen in his company. In addition to the distrust of Jews, there was a general distrust of anyone who had been in contact with Germans during the war or with any other foreigners. If you had had contact with foreigners, that meant you might have been recruited by foreign agents. One of Jakub's friends had lived in Rostov, north of Moscow, for three days while it was under German occupation. She had never mentioned it, knowing it would disqualify her from a university