Tag #150239 - Interview #78110 (Mikhail Gauzner)

From 1947 on, my father started to send his applications to the Minister of Armament, Mr. Ustinov, for being transferred to Odessa, to get his former post. It took long until he let him go. It wasn't until 1949 that he managed to transfer to Odessa Kinap Plant as a chief engineer. The head of the central administration, Mr. Polonskiy, helped my father. After we moved to Odessa they gave my father the apartment in which I still live now. I, my grandparents and my mother followed my father soon after his departure. My first impressions were from the winding - as I named them - trees in the square around the Opera House, with the knotty, bent trunks and the bright azure colored sea. I had a feeling that I had arrived home. It must have been stimulated by the fact that my parents always spoke about Odessa with such aspiration, with such caress. There weren't that many ruins any more in 1949. In the five years that had passed since the liberation of Odessa many houses had been restored. There were ruins behind our house, where I would run to and play with the boys after classes.