Tag #142575 - Interview #91884 (Leonid Aptekar)

It was very difficult to obtain a residence permit [33] to stay to lie in Kiev. My uncle Teviye, who was a roof maker in the Council of Ministers, managed to obtain a permit for me to reside in his place. I wanted to rent a room, but my uncle insisted that I stayed with him. I went to work at the ‘Kist’ company [‘hand’ in Russian] as a founder. The state anti-Semitism was quite visible already, but there were still many Jews in the shop. They were readily employed as workers: the management knew they were decent and dedicated employees. Workers were not so oppressed as intelligentsia. Besides, Jews did not drink alcohol while many people drank after the war, even at their work places. So many managers preferred to employ Jews. Besides, managers were reluctant to employ those who had stayed on the occupied territory while Jews were returning from evacuation and had a more advantageous position than those Ukrainians who had stayed in Skvira during the rule of Germans.