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When Daddy got imprisoned, it became clear to us that Mom alone wasn’t able to support three children. So, first of all I changed my school for an evening one. [Evening schools gave adult working people an opportunity to get high school education.] Red-haired Vanya Vassilyev was one of my classmates. He worked as a cook at a mechanized canteen. [In the USSR mechanized canteens were large integrated plants which did everything from food processing to cooking meals.] It was he who helped me get my first job. I was hired as an assistant to an accountant at their accounts department. The head of the department was very nice. Her younger sister also worked there, and we made friends.
I had to go round to the canteen sections, collecting different documents. And in each section employees wanted to give me something to eat: a roll, curdled milk, an ice-cream. I felt embarrassed, but I understood that everyone wished me well. After that I worked at the Krasny Oktyabr factory. It was a well known enterprise manufacturing pianos. I worked there as an accountant. Later I worked in a technical school, which prepared projectionists. [Technical schools in the USSR prepared sub-professionals for agricultural, transport and other key industries.] There I got acquainted with very interesting people. You see, I was a young girl, everything was amazing to me, and people who played some part in the film industry seemed to me the real people of art. I left that job, when I entered the 10th grade, aiming to become well prepared and enter a college. At that time I never came across any manifestations of anti-Semitism. Probably I was very lucky with the people around me and places I worked at. As is well known, before the war there were no anti-Semitic witch-hunts, conducted by state authorities, and I never faced the so-called ‘everyday’ anti-Semitism.
I had to go round to the canteen sections, collecting different documents. And in each section employees wanted to give me something to eat: a roll, curdled milk, an ice-cream. I felt embarrassed, but I understood that everyone wished me well. After that I worked at the Krasny Oktyabr factory. It was a well known enterprise manufacturing pianos. I worked there as an accountant. Later I worked in a technical school, which prepared projectionists. [Technical schools in the USSR prepared sub-professionals for agricultural, transport and other key industries.] There I got acquainted with very interesting people. You see, I was a young girl, everything was amazing to me, and people who played some part in the film industry seemed to me the real people of art. I left that job, when I entered the 10th grade, aiming to become well prepared and enter a college. At that time I never came across any manifestations of anti-Semitism. Probably I was very lucky with the people around me and places I worked at. As is well known, before the war there were no anti-Semitic witch-hunts, conducted by state authorities, and I never faced the so-called ‘everyday’ anti-Semitism.
Period
Location
St. Petersburg
Russia
Interview
Klara-Zenta Kanevskaya