This is me in the design office of the radial drilling machine-tools plant. The photo was taken in Odessa in 1975.
I decided to follow into my father's footsteps and entered Odessa Polytechnic Institute in 1953 - without exams because I had a golden medal. In 1958, after graduating from the institute, I went to work at the design office of the radial drilling machine-tools plant and found myself in excellent fellowship, headed by a Jew called Boris Bromberg - the leading designer, whom I consider my No. 1 teacher. He was a brilliant engineer, an erudite and very interesting person. Our curator was deputy chief designer Mikhail Nadol, also a Jew. The chief designer was a Jew called Fridrich Kopelev, a very well-known person in the machine-tool industry. The greater part of my accomplishments is due to science I studied under the guidance of my teachers. I wasn't a born engineer, but I always found interest in what I did. I would walk to work, murmuring songs. I jumped out of bed, sat at the desk and started drawing something with haste. The answer to a problem would come to me in my sleep. It meant that my brain worked non-stop. I liked work, I found it very interesting.
I got acquainted with my future wife, Berta Kelshtein, in 1961 when I was 25, and she was 22. We got introduced to each other by a mutual friend. It was a brief encounter in the street that resulted in nothing. A year later, I spent time with this same friend and came back from a tourist walking tour. Following habits, our tourist company went to the seafront Zhemchuzhina Restaurant in Arkadia in the evening. I met Berta again there. [Editor's note: Arkadia is a well-known Odessa beach, a recreation place.] We stayed late into the night and danced. Night. Moonlight across the sea. I walked her home; it was three in the morning. Deep inside I knew for sure - I was in love. Three months later, on 5th August 1962, we got married.
I became the leading designer of the radial drilling machine-tools plant in 1962 and held the position until 1980. In my active life as a designer-constructor I often had to go with a mission either to achieve agreement over our designs or to set up the machine-tools manufactured at our plant in companies. These included Kamsk automobile works, and some large Moscow plants, Kostroma, Kazan and Yaroslavl. And I could continue enumerating: I have about two dozen patent certificates. Our body of authors has seven patents in the leading capitalist countries: USA, Japan, France and Germany. I have some publications in scientific magazines, but I never occupied myself with science as such.
Mikhail Gauzner
The Centropa Collection at USHMM
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