|
Memories of Work
P A G E 3
“So I went through the school for five years and got a master’s degree in mechanical engineering. I started to work for one consulting firm in Leningrad... [After I moved to St. Paul] I worked for Control Data for seven years... and in May 1990 I started to work for a consulting firm in downtown Minneapolis... And this is exactly the same [work] I did in Russia.”
Sophia Shankman Rosenauer, oral history, 1991. Rosenauer and her family left Leningrad for St. Paul in 1977. Courtesy of the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest.
“I ventured out and became a Cash girl [someone who made change for sales people]. In those days, for a foreign girl... this achievement was a big feather in my cap... [Later] I took courage and went out to one of the finest stores on Nicollet Avenue, The Young-Quinlan Company... Other girls could speak English better, but I had the courage. It took nerve to ask, and to my surprise, I was told they would let me know soon.”
Bessie Halpern Schwartz, manuscript, 1956. Schwartz arrived in Minneapolis in 1900. Three years later, while working at the Leader Department Store, she sought a better job. Courtesy of the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest.
“[She] had a house full of children and she kept cows... and she milked the cows and bottled the milk herself, and went around on a little wagon and delivered it herself. She was always in a hurry, she had so many things to do.”
Rose Gillman, oral history, 1978. Gillman was recalling a dairywoman who had worked on St. Paul’s West Side, probably during the 1920s. Courtesy of the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest.
top photo: Dina Migachyov, a math teacher immigrated to St. Paul in the 1980s. Her sixth-grade class at the St. Paul Jewish Day School took first place in the 1996 Minnesota Mathematics League contest. St. Paul, 1996. Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society.
|
|
|
|
|
