This is my wife Antonina Gotlib on the left, our children Lilia and Pyotr and I, Iosif Gotlib on the right. We were often photographed with the children for our family album. We always sent such photos to my wife's family in Pskov since we didn't often see them. This photo was taken in Chanyzh in 1957.
I went to work there as a locomotive operator in 1946. I worked as electric locomotive operator all my life. My wife finished a medical school and went to work as a lab assistant in a dermatovenerologic dispensary clinic where she worked until retirement.
I finished a locomotive school with honors and they sent me to a depot in Chanyzh station [460 km from Kiev]. My family moved to Chanyzh with me. Our children went to school and my wife and I went to work. I liked spending my weekends with the family. We went for walks, to the cinema and theater. We didn't celebrate any Jewish or Russian religious holidays at home. We celebrated birthdays and Soviet holidays. In the morning we went to a parade and then Antonina arranged a festive dinner at home. We often invited friends and colleagues. We traveled on our summer vacations. I could have free railroad tickets for the family and we traveled a lot across the country. We traveled to the south and north of the USSR and we liked tourist trips.
My children studied well at school. They were ordinary Soviet children. They became pioneers and then Komsomol members. They didn't face any anti-Semitism. They had my typical Jewish surname of Gotlib, but my wife and I decided to change their nationality to their mother's to avoid problems in the future, in the passport they are written down as Russian. My son liked my job very much. After school he often came to the depot where he helped me and asked questions. After finishing school he decided to enter the Locomotive faculty in a Railroad School in Lvov. He passed his entrance exams successfully and was admitted. My son studied well and received wonderful recommendations after every training session. After finishing this school Pyotr received a job to the locomotive depot of Lvov.
My daughter Lilia finished school with a silver medal. She entered the Faculty of Electronics of Uzhhorod University. Upon graduation Svetlana got a job assignment to work as an engineer at Uzhhorod instrument making plant. She lives with us. Her private life never worked out. Her son Anton Gotlib was born in 1985. After perestroika the plant where Svetlana worked closed down. She went to work as an accountant at the department of railway passenger and freight transportation. She works there now.
