At work

Pictures taken of factory workers, doctors, teachers and merchants

Sophia Belotserkovskaya

Photo taken in: Kyiv – 1930s Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya

My father Lev Belotserkovski working at the Ivan Franko Ukrainian Drama Theater. He was the son of a poor craftsman and fell in love with the theater when the Tsarist Army Theater visited his hometown of Oleksandriya, in Kirovohrad oblast. He became friends with Gnat Yura, who became a famous actor, and helped him found the Ivan Franko Ukrainian Drama Theater in 1920.

Grigoriy Kagan

Photo taken in: Kyiv – 1974 Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya

After retiring from the army in 1963, I worked as a hockey and boxing referee for many years. It was hard work, because I refereed many games and matches back-to-back, but I enjoyed the sports and it paid well.

Mina Smolianskaya

Photo taken in: Chernivtsi – 1984 Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya

Me working at the button factory where I started working after my children started school. It was hard work that created corns on my palms. I had to make 16 thousand buttons per shift and earned only 360 rubles per month.

Lazar Gurfinkel

Photo taken in: Khotyn – 1936 Interviewer: Ella Levitskaya

In the center is my father, Michael Gurfinkel, in front of his pharmacy. He was accepted to the Pharmaceutical Faculty at Moscow University despite the Tsarist government’s policy of limiting Jewish students to five percent, and became the manager of a pharmacy in his hometown of Khotyn. When he passed away my older brother Moisey, on the right, took over the pharmacy.

Gherda Kagan

Photo taken in: Odessa – 1961 Interviewer: Natalia Rezanova

This is me, sitting in front of the microscope, with my colleagues Tamara Simich and Irina Poliak. I graduated from the Food Industry College and then worked in the laboratory of the scientific research institute of the tinned food industry.

Semyon Goldwar

Photo taken in: Odessa – 2002 Interviewer: Natalia Fomina

Me working in the architecture shop of the State Institute of Town Planning in Odessa. One of the most interesting projects I was able to take part in was designing the memorial complex dedicated to the Jews who perished in Odessa over the course of its history: the victims of pogroms and the victims of the Holocaust.

Jemma Grinberg

Photo taken in: Kyiv – 1952 Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya

My mother Anna Deich, in the center of the second row, with her kindergarten class. She had been the director of a children’s home but was fired in 1949 during the antisemitic campaign against “cosmopolitans,” and found a job as a kindergarten teacher.

Moisey Goihberg

Photo taken in: Kyiv – 1980s Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya

This is a photo of me conducting a surgery. After demobilizing from the army in 1947, I began to practice urology as a civilian doctor. In early 1953 the Doctors’ Plot made things difficult for Jewish doctors. Several were fired from our clinic. I was reassigned to work in a village as head of its health department. Fortunately, after a year, I was allowed to return to Kyiv and my work as a surgeon.