Tag #150001 - Interview #78060 (Ronia Finkelshtein)

After the war Boris and Fania worked at the Institute of Archaeology in Kiev. Boris had finished the Faculty of Literature at the Pedagogical Institute, but he specialized in archaeology and had inventions in that field. In the early 1960s the Institute of Archaeology sent him to a reserve in Olvia [400 km from Kiev] where he was the director for two years. Boris was successful with his work in archaeology. He also wrote poems and short stories, but he wasn't ambitious and didn't publish his writings. Fania was very smart. She was the manager of the antique section of the Museum of Western and Oriental Art in Kiev in the 1970s. I liked to visit her at home. She always had gatherings of interesting people: archaeologists, historians, poets and writers. Her friends became my friends.

I got along well with my friends at GIINTIZ. We went to all concerts at the Philharmonic and the Conservatory. I liked performances of Russian and Ukrainian drama - there was no Jewish theater in Kiev at that time. Neither my friends nor I went to the synagogue. Of all Jewish holidays we only celebrated Pesach. My mother always got some matzah for Pesach, but we didn't really follow all the rules when we celebrated this holiday. We didn't light candles on Saturdays either. It wasn't customary in our circle.

When I was 43 I received an apartment. My colleague and I got a two-bedroom apartment in the Otradniy neighborhood, far from the city center. I got a room and my colleague got a room. My mother and I shared my room. My mother didn't have a right for this apartment as she wasn't an employee of our Institute. She was very happy that we had a dwelling of our own, but she only lived in this apartment for three years. She passed away in 1966. She was buried in the Jewish section of the Baikovoye cemetery.