Peter Rabtsevich and his wife Evgenia Rabtsevich

This is me and my wife, Evgenia Rabtsevich [nee Siderman] in 1949 in Kiev. I got married on 31st December 1949. I met my future wife at work. She was a Jew and worked as an accountant. Evgenia was born in Kiev in 1926. She finished lower secondary school and an accounting school. Evgenia and her parents were in evacuation in Kazakhstan during the war. They returned to Kiev in August 1944. Evgenia was a Komsomol activist and secretary of the Komsomol unit. Later she was elected chairman of the audit commission of the Podolsk district Komsomol committee. We didn't have a wedding party - life was too hard at the time. I moved in with my wife. Later I received a room in a communal apartment. There were two other families living there, Russians, but we got along very well. Our daughter, Polina, was born in 1952. We named her after my mother. In 1959 I received a two-bedroom apartment. There were two rooms, a kitchen and a shower, located in the kitchen. Our son, Ilia, was born in this apartment in 1959. He was named after my wife's brother who was killed at the Babi Yar. After our daughter was born my wife quit her job. When our youngest child went to school she went to work as an accountant at the kindergarten department of the river port. After the war I worked as a technician, then I became a site manager, and later I was promoted to the position of a leading engineer. I studied at the Communications Faculty of the Kiev Institute of Water-Transport Engineers by correspondence. I graduated in 1959 and received my diploma. I developed some technical ideas, and my work was displayed at the Exhibition of Achievements of Public Economy in Moscow and Kiev. I developed a radio facility that allowed contacting any telephone from a boat. Other improvements were related to automated telephone stations and long distance communication lines.