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This helped me enter the Kiev Institute of Construction Engineers in 1932. I also got some help from the Institute’s legal consultant, Isaac Grigoryevich Bek, who was an acquaintance of my father. But I took the entrance exams just like everybody else.
I have wonderful memories of my Institute. The standards of both teachers and students were high. One of our foremost teachers was Nikolay Vasilyevich Karnaukhov, a Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. He always treated us with respect. Most of us (23 out of 26) were Jewish. We had absolutely no “national” problems with other teachers or students. I graduated from the Institute with honors and was given the diploma of a construction engineer. I remember my student years for other things too. Even though we spent a lot of time studying, we still had time for fun. We were young. We dated girls, watched movies, went to theaters. I took classes at a dance school. The head of this school was called Berdichevsky. I think he was an opera actor. Learning dances was fashionable then: tango, blues, Boston. There was another dance school led by an engineer-economist named Miller. He taught dancing for material reasons because it paid well. He had groups of people who paid him for teaching them dancing. He rented a club and our students went there. Some took dance classes from both teachers. Sometimes students drank alcohol, but they never got drunk. In general, youth is youth....
I have wonderful memories of my Institute. The standards of both teachers and students were high. One of our foremost teachers was Nikolay Vasilyevich Karnaukhov, a Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. He always treated us with respect. Most of us (23 out of 26) were Jewish. We had absolutely no “national” problems with other teachers or students. I graduated from the Institute with honors and was given the diploma of a construction engineer. I remember my student years for other things too. Even though we spent a lot of time studying, we still had time for fun. We were young. We dated girls, watched movies, went to theaters. I took classes at a dance school. The head of this school was called Berdichevsky. I think he was an opera actor. Learning dances was fashionable then: tango, blues, Boston. There was another dance school led by an engineer-economist named Miller. He taught dancing for material reasons because it paid well. He had groups of people who paid him for teaching them dancing. He rented a club and our students went there. Some took dance classes from both teachers. Sometimes students drank alcohol, but they never got drunk. In general, youth is youth....
Period
Interview
Alfred Liberman