Tag #153835 - Interview #103396 (Zinaida Minevich )

I lived with my mother all this time and worked at the Giprochlor design institute as a mechanical engineer. It was very difficult for a Jew to find a job in Kiev at that time. I was lucky.  When I came to this institute looking for a job it was an affiliate of a big Russian institute in Dzerzhynsk near Gorky. Its management wasn’t anti-Semitic and didn’t report to the Ukrainian Communist Party district committee. Ukrainian party committees were watching the percentage of Jewish employees not to exceed 5 % very strictly. And the management of this institute was interested in qualified employees. They employed many Jews that couldn’t find a job anywhere else. I remember very well how the human resources manager in Kiev processing my employment documents on the basis of an order from Dzerzhynsk murmured wickedly “Uh, this Haimovich team” (Haimovich was a popular Jewish last name; it was used as curse).