Tag #150242 - Interview #78110 (Mikhail Gauzner)

It was the end of 1951 - the campaign against 'cosmopolitans' [9] was in full swing. My father was well acquainted with the directors and chief engineers of most of Odessa's machine-building plants. Some of these executives wouldn't accept him on various pretexts. Others would pat him on the shoulder but say that they couldn't employ him. Some of them would turn away when they met him in the street and wouldn't exchange greetings. In the beginning my father didn't understand that this behavior was connected with the anti-Semitic campaign. But when he got to know that the majority of Jews working as chief engineers or directors at Odessa plants had been dismissed, he realized that it was state anti-Semitism.