Semen Natov

This is my husband, Semen Natov. The photo was taken in 1937 in Kiev.

I began to work at a car-repair plant where I met my future husband, who was chief of a workshop. My husband, Semen Yakovlevich Natov, was Jewish. His true last name was Radulsky. His real first name was Natan. For some reason, even before I met him, he changed his first and last names and became Semen Natov. My husband was a good draughts-player. He organized draughts games in the Soviet Union, selected gifted children, and taught them. He also organized the first children’s chess and draughts club under the Pioneer House.

We did not get married at once because we had nowhere to live. Prior to that, Semen lived with his mother in a small room. His mother dyed clothes and fabric. Her business was illegal at the time and she did it at home. Throughout their small room there were all kinds of things hanging; their room smelled strongly of paint. So, we could not live there. I never knew his father, because his mother divorced him long before I met her.

Then, his mother bought us a room in the apartment of Professor Bykhovsky. He was a famous oncologist in Kiev. He had a huge apartment downtown. He had a young wife, and when the professor died, she began to sell this apartment room-by-room. My mother-in-law bought us a small room and that’s when Semen and I registered our marriage and began to live together.

We got married in 1937.