Leo Lubich with his wife Rosa Finkler

My wife, Rosa Finkler and I, Leo Lubich, photographed during a walk in Lvov in the early 1950s. In the background is an old building in Lvov.

In 1945 Rosa and I went to start a new life in Lvov. In Lvov we met the director of the machine unit plant, Litinetskiy. We were to work at this plant. We received a room that formerly belonged to a Polish family that had left Poland after the war. There was a Polish tenant in another room. He was also going to leave. We invited Rosa’s parents from Izhevsk and decided to stay. We lived in one room with my in-laws for many years until we got another room after our neighbor tenant died.

We didn’t have children and that was all right with us. We could enjoy life and went to the theater or restaurant every week. We spent vacations at the seashore in the Crimea or Caucasus. We had enough money. Rosa worked as laboratory supervisor at the machine unit plant. I worked at a shoe shop and then got a job at the Progress Company. I was Human Resources Manager there. I never faced any anti-Semitism, even during those years when it became state policy – in the early 1950s. However, there was one incident during this period. One of the stores owned by the Progress Company, "Trud," made footwear for work. The insoles were supposed to be made of leather and the sole had to be secured with special fixtures. Since it was hard to get the necessary materials, we obtained permission from management to make insoles from a different material - leather cloth - and to use wooden pins as fixtures. They made good shoes. But once I was called by an investigation officer that opened a case against me and few other managers. The charges against us were associated with the theft of materials that were in short supply. After our licenses and permits were received by Kiev the case was closed. But I never believed that this annoying incident had anything to do with anti-Semitism since other employees (of different nationalities) were also arrested. This happened in the early 1950s. I remember how Rosa and her parents sobbed. I remember how Stalin died in 1953. Rosa sobbed when she saw the monument to Stalin in the central park. I wasn’t upset since I understood that there would be somebody else to replace him and life would go on.