Izia Antipka with his sister Lidia Goldstein

This is me with my sister Lidia, photographed before my wedding in Kishinev, 1953.

Upon demobilization from the army I returned to my parents in Kishinev. Uncle Musia helped me to get a job at the meat grinder repair shop. I became an apprentice, a foreman and later a superintendent and worked at this shop my whole life. I also entered the Dnepropetrovsk College of Railroad Transport, but I never finished it due to my illness. I had psoriasis that acquired an acute form during examinations and my doctors advised me to quit my studies due to the stress this caused. There were mainly Jewish employees in the shop and its director was Moldovan. The anti-Semitism in the early 1950s didn’t affect us, though Jewish chief engineers were fired. I kept working without any problems. Once I visited a tobacco factory, when I was chief of technical supervision. I met Alina Litvak, a Jewish girl, who worked at this factory. I liked her and we began to see each other. Then we fell in love with each other and I proposed to her. 

After the wedding we lived with my parents for some time. My sister married Alexandr Goldstein, a Jewish man from Kishinev. Lida was a pharmacist and Alexandr was a railroad engineer. My sister and later I received apartments from his organization. My sister, her husband and their daughter Inna moved to Israel in the early 1990s. Lida died in 2000.