Tag #147291 - Interview #78416 (Meyer Markhasin)

I moved there in the times of the notorious "doctors’ plot" in 1952. It is interesting, that the acting chief mechanics, a Russian and a Party member, was dismissed from his position, and a non-party Jew was hired instead. I arrived there at such a time, when Jews were simply thrown out of buses and trams. I was met extremely coldly in the factory! The director began to follow me everywhere and kept an eye on me to see where I would fail. My every wrong step was reported to the Ministry and there were innumerable complains. But it was very interesting, and now I laugh when I remember it, but then I suffered a lot. The situation was like this: I often visited the Head Office where I had a lot of friends, with whom I was in the institute, and they would tell me everything, so I was always informed of all those intrigues. Before I occupied my position, there was an engineer working there from the factory "The Red Triangle," who had designed some kind of semi-automatic machine. They produced paints and round shoe polish tins with a label. With the help of his fingers and gesticulation and without any design documentation or drawings he commenced to show how exactly he was going to build his apparatus. And by the time I appeared there they had already spent an enormous sum of money on that machine. When I arrived and saw the kinematics, I understood that the device wouldn’t ever work. I came to the director, not knowing who hired the guy, and said: "What kind of fool was this who could employ the guy who has neither drawings nor any documentation and who shows everything using only his fingers? Heaps of money have been already spent, and nothing is going to come out of this automatic device!" And it turned out that the director himself appeared to be that fool. It was horrible! Finally, I quarreled with him and filed an application on dismissal. I worked in Kalinin for some time, from 1944 to 1946, and in 1946 quit my job and went back to Leningrad. After the war was over we returned to Leningrad and I worked at the factory "Russian Diesel" from 1946 to 1947 in the department of chief mechanic as an engineer.