Tag #136761 - Interview #77995 (Liana Degtiar)

I graduated from the university in 1956, and received a diploma with honors. I got a job assignment [see mandatory job assignment in the USSR] [21] to Soroki, as per my request. I worked at a school. I hated teaching, but there weren't many enterprises in Moldova. It was hard to get a job even in Kishinev. All our graduates went to work in schools. In the 1950s they started building factories and plants in Moldova. The ones they were constructing didn't require significant raw materials: they were garment factories and instrument manufacturing plants. I worked for the three required years at the school and when the Scientific Research Institute of Instrument Making opened in Kishinev in late 1959, I went to work there. Our laboratory dealt in scientific research in the domain of instrument making, and each employee developed his/her subject. We had a great team at the laboratory. We celebrated holidays: Soviet holidays, and birthdays, together. Anti-Semitism was just out of the question. I rented an apartment in Kishinev. There I met Ivan Barbul, my landlord's relative. He was my husband to be.

My husband was born into a religious Jewish family in Rezina in 1929. His name was Isaac Rybakov then. His father, Grigoriy Rybakov, was a teacher at a cheder, and his mother, Feiga Rybakova, was a housewife. There were seven children in the family: Abram, Anyuta, Moisey, Nehoma, Riva, Betia, Isaac, and Shmil. Anyuta joined a group of chalutzim to go to Palestine in 1935.