Tag #155547 - Interview #90041 (Susanna Sirota)

It was impossible to find a job. I couldn’t even imagine how hard it would feel when you came to an organization and they said, ‘Yes, yes’ and you leave your documents and the following day, they tell you, ‘We apologize, but we’ve already hired a person for this position.’ It happened many times. I couldn’t imagine this was happening to me. I went to see the secretary of the party district committee and he pretended he was furious about it and said, ‘No, this cannot be true!’ He helped me to get a job as an accountant in a construction company. 

I worked there several years until this company closed and I lost my job again. Once my former colleague, a driver, called me. He worked in the ‘Znaniye’ company developing manuals and said that I could work part-time as a typist. Since I was a radio operator and could transmit 140 signs per minute I went to work there. Later they employed me as a secretary and my knowledge of Ukrainian proved to be very useful. Here is the full name of this company: Association for Popularization of Scientific, Technical, Social and Political Knowledge. This was an ideological organization of the regional party committee. I was very grateful that my boss employed me without knowing of my Jewish identity. Later, when he found out the truth, he supported me and treated me with deep respect.