Selected text
After the war, we remained in Chuguev for a year. Dora became ill (with a woman’s disease) and I went to my manager to ask him let us return to Kiev. He signed my request form and we moved back to Kiev in summer of 1946. The room we had lived in was occupied by someone else, and there was no furniture or anything else left. I went to the district executive office and they told me that all they could do was put us on the lists of people who were in need of an apartment. We realized that waiting for our turn might take years and years. Everything was destroyed after the war; Kiev was also destroyed. We decided to resolve this problem by ourselves. We rented an apartment in an old house in Podol, a district in Kiev on the right bank of the Dnipro. It was a damp room, and Dorochka was often ill. All I had was my profession as a tinsmith, but I found a job in Podol. People were very poor after the war and couldn’t afford to buy new things, so they brought us lots of their old utensils for repair -- old buckets, bowls, tins. We also made ovens. We had a lot of work. We were Jewish and Russian workers, but we got along very well and there was no anti-Semitism. We had nothing to argue about – we were all poor people.
After the war my mother lived with Polia in Kiev, where she died in 1958. My brothers also returned to Kiev and worked as tinsmiths. Many people in Kiev knew them. After the war I wasn’t a member of the Party any longer. I wasn’t interested. The attitude towards Jewish people changed considerably. One could hear “zhyd, zhydy” everywhere. We could hear it in the streets, and later at the building materials factory where I went to work. Anti-Semitism exists and will exist. We are aware of this. It was so during the old regime, and in the period of the Soviet power, too.
In 1952 Dorochka, my dear friend and my love, died from breast cancer. It was a big loss for me. I didn’t know what to do. My distant relative Clara told me to marry Fiera. I knew Fiera already. She was distant relative of my father and earlier, before WWII , had visited us in Kiev. She lived in Bahchisarai in the Crimea and worked as an accountant. She came to Kiev with some lout she was planning to marry. Dorochka told her to leave him because he wasn’t a nice person. So now, Fiera was living alone. Clara wrote her that Dorochka had died and told her to come. Firochka arrived – she turned out to be such a striking beauty; I couldn’t even dream about such beauty. She told me she would make a good wife for me. She went to work as a cashier at the October Palace of Culture. She had a good salary. But we still lived in that same small nine square meter room. At one point, the director of the factory where I was working came to visit us. He looked around and said that his bathroom was bigger than this room. Later it was possible to invest money into the construction of cooperative apartment. I invested 1000 rubles and we received a separate one-room apartment, and could pay off the remaining amount over 20 years. In 1973 Fiera also died from cancer. She was 52 years old -- she was born in 1921. Regretfully, I don’t remember my first or my second wife’s maiden name. And so I was left in this apartment alone.
After the war my mother lived with Polia in Kiev, where she died in 1958. My brothers also returned to Kiev and worked as tinsmiths. Many people in Kiev knew them. After the war I wasn’t a member of the Party any longer. I wasn’t interested. The attitude towards Jewish people changed considerably. One could hear “zhyd, zhydy” everywhere. We could hear it in the streets, and later at the building materials factory where I went to work. Anti-Semitism exists and will exist. We are aware of this. It was so during the old regime, and in the period of the Soviet power, too.
In 1952 Dorochka, my dear friend and my love, died from breast cancer. It was a big loss for me. I didn’t know what to do. My distant relative Clara told me to marry Fiera. I knew Fiera already. She was distant relative of my father and earlier, before WWII , had visited us in Kiev. She lived in Bahchisarai in the Crimea and worked as an accountant. She came to Kiev with some lout she was planning to marry. Dorochka told her to leave him because he wasn’t a nice person. So now, Fiera was living alone. Clara wrote her that Dorochka had died and told her to come. Firochka arrived – she turned out to be such a striking beauty; I couldn’t even dream about such beauty. She told me she would make a good wife for me. She went to work as a cashier at the October Palace of Culture. She had a good salary. But we still lived in that same small nine square meter room. At one point, the director of the factory where I was working came to visit us. He looked around and said that his bathroom was bigger than this room. Later it was possible to invest money into the construction of cooperative apartment. I invested 1000 rubles and we received a separate one-room apartment, and could pay off the remaining amount over 20 years. In 1973 Fiera also died from cancer. She was 52 years old -- she was born in 1921. Regretfully, I don’t remember my first or my second wife’s maiden name. And so I was left in this apartment alone.
Period
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Yevsey Kotkov