David Gauzner

This is a picture of my grandfather on my father's side, David Gauzner. There is an inscription at the back, which reads, ?To dear Sonechka for good and lasting memory. Loving you so much, David Osipovich Gauzner. 25 July, 1903?. The photo was taken in Kiev in the photo studio of Guzemsky. I remember my grandparents on my father's side very well. My grandfather was born in Zvenigorodka in 1881. Unfortunately I don't know where he studied. In our family archives there are still several postcards that my grandfather had written to my grandmother, 'To Mademoiselle Sofia Khasileva, Kalyus.' All of them are written in Russian, in smart handwriting, grammatically perfect, which indicates my grandfather's good education. How they got acquainted, I can't say, but such a loving pair as those two, who spent more than 50 years together, I've never seen. My grandparents got married in 1903. After the wedding my grandfather moved to Mogilyov-Podolsk where he owned a dry goods store. Following the October Revolution of 1917 they eloped, so to speak, from being persecuted by the authorities for being bourgeois people. They moved to Odessa in the 1920s and settled down with some relatives. Grandfather David put an end to his business activities. Along with his best friend, an undergraduate smatter physician, he created some device to produce long-playing gramophone needles that didn't go blunt as quickly as conventional ones. My grandfather worked as a metal craftsman and found a market for those needles. The dirty part of his work was creating the device. When he came home his hands reeked of kerosene. He washed himself in the kitchen, snorting, and there was a huge pool of water around him. My grandfather had poor hearing, personal conversation was thus hampered, and perhaps because of this, or maybe, due to his trait of character, he was keen on books. He visited the city library once a week, on Friday, with an avoska [a Russian string bag, avoska literally means 'just in case']. And he brought the bag back, filled with books in Russian, and read. My grandfather only had two hobbies: his work and his books.