Tag #149981 - Interview #78119 (Victor Feldman)

My son Semyon entered the Faculty of Chemistry of Odessa University in 1959. He married Irina Konstantinova in 1962, when he was a 4th-year student. Her father was a military sailor and her family was much better off than we. My son faced anti-Semitism when two of his friends were admitted to postgraduate studies after finishing university while he wasn't for some farfetched reason. He had been told there were no more places. Upon graduation my son went to the army where he served two years. Then he was recruited again and promoted to the rank of first lieutenant. He lived with his wife in her mother's apartment in Vorontsovski Lane in the center of the town. Semyon went to work as an engineer at the laboratory of the university. His daughter Valentina was born in 1963.

I get along very well with my daughter-in-law. Things don't work very well with my granddaughter Valentina though. I don't quite understand her lifestyle, but it's her business. My granddaughter does very well and is an intelligent girl. She is an economist. What I don't like about her generation is that they don't read books. Her husband Vadim is Russian. My great-granddaughter Sasha is 14 years old.

I was quite indifferent to the Jewish emigration to Israel that started in the early 1970s. I didn't quite understand why they wanted to leave, but I understood that it was some new process. Besides, Jews began to leave this country after a certain pressure when many Jews were fired from their management positions and when a selection system was introduced in higher educational institutions.