Tag #141325 - Interview #94042 (Isabella Karanchuk)

I finished my technical school in 1949 and got a job assignment [14] at the department of construction and management of governmental buildings. This was a very good job. It is strange, but the anti-Semitic campaigns of struggle against rootless cosmopolites [15] or poisoning doctors  [16] in the late 1940s had no impact on me, probably because I always treated people nicely and they returned this attitude. Nobody abused me or allowed any expressions against Jews in my presence. After two years of work I received a room in a communal apartment in a two-storied house in Kreschatik. It’s hard to say for sure, but there were more than fifteen neighbors in this apartment. We all had our own doorbell, a bulb in the corridor and electric power meter. There was no toilet, bathroom or kitchen in the apartment. There was a tap and a sink. We ran to the toilet in the yard, washed in a tub in the room and cooked on the primus stove in the room, but we were happy to have a room for us.  I lived in this apartment for many years.
Two years after finishing the technical school I entered the All-Union Extramural Construction College. There was an academic center of this college in Kiev and I attended classes every evening. I also went to work at the Giprozdrav design office responsible for development of designs of health care institutions: hospitals, recreation centers and polyclinics. I worked there as an engineer till I retired. I joined the party here and this was a contentious move of mine: I believed in communist ideas and like my father I believed it to be my duty to join the first rows of its builders. Many of my colleagues were Jews, but I still did not segregate people by their nationality. I believed in good attitudes all my life.