In 1968 my mom retired, and the military camp she worked for gave her an apartment in Leningrad, near Chernaya Rechka, where I live now. And as we moved from Pargolovo together with my mom and it was a long way to get to my work – to the school, I managed to get a job at the Public Library. When I came there, it turned out that according to secret laws they didn’t give jobs to Jews.
They gave me a job only in the department of newspapers and only because its manager was Jewish – she had been working there for a long time – during the siege of Leningrad too. Her name was Tatyana Solomonovna Grigoryan, and it was she who gave me work. Her department lacked people and it was very hard physical work – to carry large volumes of newspapers ‘Pravda,’ ‘Leningradskaya Pravda,’ volumes of several months. So we carried them from place to place, and sometimes it was required to file newspapers for a period of 30 years! Imagine shelves five meters high! So we used step-ladders and carriages – it was a very hard job.
They gave me a job only in the department of newspapers and only because its manager was Jewish – she had been working there for a long time – during the siege of Leningrad too. Her name was Tatyana Solomonovna Grigoryan, and it was she who gave me work. Her department lacked people and it was very hard physical work – to carry large volumes of newspapers ‘Pravda,’ ‘Leningradskaya Pravda,’ volumes of several months. So we carried them from place to place, and sometimes it was required to file newspapers for a period of 30 years! Imagine shelves five meters high! So we used step-ladders and carriages – it was a very hard job.