Moisey Goihberg

This photo shows me at work. The photo was taken in 1981 on my 60th birthday. I demobilized in 1947. I left my well-paying position at the Kiev Military Regiment for the position of a common doctor. I was eager to do scientific research in medicine. I was introduced to my future tutor, Professor Boris Polonskiy, the best urologist in the country. I studied urology under his supervision. Soon I became a registrar at the Onco-Urological Department. I studied urology from zero. Professor Polonskiy patiently taught me everything he knew and could perform well: the science of urology, and practical skills. Soon I began to perform surgeries and soon I was performing complicated surgeries successfully. At the beginning of 1953 when the Doctors' Plot started along with other anti-Semitic campaigns stirred up in Moscow, I was going through a hard time. In February 1953 I performed a surgery on an elderly man. All the other doctors refused to operate on him. They were afraid that the patient would not survive the operation. At the end of the surgery my assistant told me that by negligence we had transfused the patient with the wrong blood type. This meant death for the patient. We quickly retransfused the patient with the appropriate blood. By some miracle the patient survived. This annoying mistake that was not my fault had serious consequences. The chief doctor of the hospital believed it was his task to get rid of Jews. If the patient had died I would have been taken to court. Before his release from hospital the patient, who didn't know what had happened during his surgery, asked a nurse for my name, saying, 'My granddaughter is a schoolgirl. There are articles in newspapers about doctors that poison people. I want to go to my granddaughter's school to tell children about this wonderful Jewish doctor, Moisey Goihberg. All the other doctors refused to operate on me, but he performed this surgery and saved me.' Every day I opened newspapers with horror. There were satirical articles with Jewish names (specifying their real names in brackets). Assistant Professor Krisson and a few other Jews were fired from our clinic. The party district committee issued a decree stating that it was difficult for a Christian to get employed because many people of different faiths got jobs. In 1954 they found a possibility to get rid of me. I was called to the district health department and ordered to become head of the district health department in the town of Stavysche near Kiev. I worked for a year in Stavysche and did well. I also performed surgeries at the local hospital. After a year I was allowed to return to Kiev. My life after that was quiet. I defended my candidate's thesis although I was an ordinary doctor-registrar. In 1965 the Institute of Urology was established in Kiev and I was a successful applicant for the position of senior researcher. I worked successfully in that post until 1984. After I turned sixty I went to work as a consultant at the Kiev Oncological Clinic.