This is me, Busia Makalets, at work in the Radio committee. This photo was taken in Kishinev in 1962. One of my colleagues took this photo.
I liked my job as music editor. I liked working in the record library, listening and selecting recordings of music pieces to include them in radio concerts. I also made montages of opera performances and had over 200 of them. Before a performance there was to be a story about the composer, the author of the performance, and I selected an actor to read these stories. For ten years I conducted programs about Moldovan music on the radio. Every Friday the Union of composers of Moldova had auditions of new music pieces and I always got invitations there.
I worked for the radio for 30 years. My boss was the wife of Petru Zadnipru, a Moldovan poet. She was a terrible anti-Semite. She didn’t promote me to senior editor, though de facto I was a senior editor. When she became a widow, she used to come to me at work. I am not a rancorous person. We became friends and even used to have a drink together. I joked: ‘Besides being a zhydovka [abusive term for Jewish women], I became a drunkard.’
