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There was a high rate of unemployment in Kiev. The employment office sent me to a private tinsmith shop. I worked as tinsmith my whole life. At first there were 5 of us, but the shop later grew to have 30 employees. I bought myself a bicycle and gave rides to girls to the stadium. I had many friends and many girlfriends. I loved them and our feelings were mutual. There was a dancing club on the second floor of a building on the corner of Bessarabka. I didn’t miss one single night. I was very popular with the girls. I was a handsome young man, always clean and neatly dressed . It was at that time that I changed my last name. It didn’t sound very nice to say my last name Kot (Kot in Russian is “cat”). It was easy to change one’s name at that time. There were no passports. I went to an office and asked them to add 3 letters to my last name – and it became Kotkov. My brothers also changed their names. Yakov took his wife’s last name – Glastun, and the youngest – Izia – changed his last name to Katkov.
The NEP, the New Economic Policy introduced by Lenin to support small business and entrepreneurs, was eliminated in 1928, and private shops were closed. They were building big factories. I went to work at a big aircraft plant. I met a lovely Jewish girl Dorochka at this plant. She was carrying bricks at the construction site – they were building shops for this plant. She looked poor and dark. I asked her “Darkie, darkie, what is your name?” “Dora”. “You Yiddish?” “Yiddish”. “Will you marry me?” Her parents had been killed during a pogrom in 1920s when she was sixteen. She was born in 1906 in a little Jewish borough near Kiev. She understood, but did not speak Yiddish, and didn’t know anything about Jewish traditions. She was living with an aunt of hers whom she didn’t like. We didn’t have a wedding ceremony. We just registered our marriage at the Registry Office. We didn’t have a place to live, either. I couldn’t take her to that janitor’s place where my family lived -- it didn’t even have separate rooms, so I made arrangements with a Russian woman and she let us stay in her room for 50 rubles. We lived there until the beginning of the Great Patriotic War (World War II) in 1941.
The NEP, the New Economic Policy introduced by Lenin to support small business and entrepreneurs, was eliminated in 1928, and private shops were closed. They were building big factories. I went to work at a big aircraft plant. I met a lovely Jewish girl Dorochka at this plant. She was carrying bricks at the construction site – they were building shops for this plant. She looked poor and dark. I asked her “Darkie, darkie, what is your name?” “Dora”. “You Yiddish?” “Yiddish”. “Will you marry me?” Her parents had been killed during a pogrom in 1920s when she was sixteen. She was born in 1906 in a little Jewish borough near Kiev. She understood, but did not speak Yiddish, and didn’t know anything about Jewish traditions. She was living with an aunt of hers whom she didn’t like. We didn’t have a wedding ceremony. We just registered our marriage at the Registry Office. We didn’t have a place to live, either. I couldn’t take her to that janitor’s place where my family lived -- it didn’t even have separate rooms, so I made arrangements with a Russian woman and she let us stay in her room for 50 rubles. We lived there until the beginning of the Great Patriotic War (World War II) in 1941.
Period
Location
Kiev
Ukraine
Interview
Yevsey Kotkov