Yuriy Paskevich

I, Yuriy Paskevich, am a student of Architecture Department, Engineering and Construction Institute.

I became a Komsomol member one year later than the other children in my class. I had never been an active pioneer and avoided social activities. While the others were involved in the subbotniks and voskresniks , cleaning up the school or the yard, I was playing football. I was reprimanded for it officially at the meetings. And the Komsomol activists postponed my admission to Komsomol. I wasn't eager to become a Komsomol member but it was necessary to be no different from everybody else. Besides, if one wasn't a Komsomol member, it made things more difficult at school and it was more difficult to enter an Institute.

So I went to the preparatory course to Kiev Engineering and Construction Institute. I started in April and entrance exams were in August. I made 5000 drawings between April and August. My teacher showed my drawings at the exam to demonstrate what a person could achieve in 4 months. People from Surikov Art school and from Kiev Art School were taking entrance exams there, but there were only two "5" grades. I got one of these two. And so I entered the Institute.

I finished Institute in 1955. I had job offers from the Academy of architecture and "Kievproject". They knew me there, I was even awarded a bonus at the contest there, but my job assignment was in Ashghabad, destroyed by an earthquake then. It was a hard blow for me. It might be that this case had nothing to do with my nationality. Just before graduation I had a big argument with the secretary of the Party bureau. But still, almost all Jews from my course happened to get their job assignments in Ashghabad. And there were so many requests to provide architects in Kiev.

Nationality has never been of any importance to me. Never. A human being, a personality and his outlooks - that's what is important. My friends are my friends regardless of their nationally. Russian, Ukrainian, Jews - people, they are just my friends.

After 1991 I had to take to religious issue, the issues, related to placement of cult structures. I had to provide assistance to all confessions: Judaist sects, Ukrainian and Christian religious communities, Catholics, Greek Catholics and Protestants. They came to discuss their issues with me and I even published an article in a newspaper with the information that I was dealing with such issues, so that they knew where to go. I came to Judaism after the Babiy Yar, after my work on the monument and Menorah.