Before the war, my family lived 75 kilometers from Leningrad in my mother’s home city, Shlisselburg.[1] Shlisselburg is widely known because of the fortress there, Oreshok.[2] This is the fortress where Alexander Ulyanov, Vladimir Lenin’s brother, was hung and buried.[3] He was a revolutionary and there’s an apple tree that grows at his grave.

      My father was from Moldova. He went to a University in Romania; his family was large and poor so the state paid for his education. My father was a member of the communist party, and because of this he would often get arrested. While in jail, he went on hunger strikes just so that his mother could visit him. Because of his repeated arrests, the family decided he had to leave Moldova. My father left for the Soviet Union and arrived in Moscow on the day of Lenin’s funeral (January 1924). The communist party sent him to Shlisselburg from there.

      My father became the Secretary of the Regional Communist Party in Shlisselburg and this is where he met and married my mother. My mother came from a simple family: her father was a carpenter and her mother was a housewife. She had one sister. After my parents married, the communist party sent my father to Novgorod, Russia, where he became the Director of the Soviet Party School.[4] I was born in Novgorod, but we were sent to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) soon after that, where my father attended the Institute of Red Professors, a graduate-level education institution. Graduates were sent by the party to strengthen the kolkhoz farms, and we were sent to Dagestan, Russia, where we lived in the city of Derbent.[5]

      In Derbent, my mother worked as a clerical worker in the State Union and my father was the Secretary of the Regional Communist Party. One day my father was scheduled to attend a certain meeting in Makhachkala, and while he was there he was arrested under Article 58, which meant he was held as an “enemy of the people.” In later years, my father’s name was rehabilitated, though he was most likely killed. I never saw him again. My mother took us back to Shlisselburg, where she worked in a factory and I went to school.

      The war began after I finished the fifth grade. My mother had taken a military course of some sort prior to the war so she was part of the city’s air defense force. I was with her at work the day her boss told us the Germans were just kilometers away from the factory, and that whoever could should run to the docks for the last ship leaving Shlisselburg. It was a military hospital ship carrying the wounded. My mother and I were able to get on the ship and flee the Germans.

      We sailed for a long time across Lake Ladoga until we arrived to the city of Ladoga. The Germans bombed our ship all the way across the lake. There were wounded people everywhere. Several people died there as we watched. They gathered all the evacuees together in Ladoga and prepared trains with simple boxcars to take us elsewhere. We traveled for a month without being able to wash up or change clothes. At each station they gave us a small piece of bread and some hot water.

      We went to the city of Molotov (now Perm), where we finally cleaned our clothes and rid ourselves of lice. After that, the evacuees were divided up and taken to various collective farms. My mother remembered that we had relatives in Kamskoe Uste, in Tatarstan, and she said there were ships that could get us there. We decided to leave because nothing was keeping us in Molotov.

      We traveled on our own along the Volga River to Tatarstan, another very long trip. When we got there, my mother found my Aunt Vera, one of our relatives who worked on the docks in Kamskoe Uste. Kamskoe Uste was a large village located 75 kilometers from Kazan, Russia. We lived there for three years. My mother found work on the docks and I went to school.

      As soon as the blockade of Leningrad was lifted, my mother and I returned immediately to Shlisselburg.[6] Our house was gone, but the authorities found a place for us to live in barracks. I had finished the eighth grade, but unfortunately I couldn’t continue my education in Shlisselburg because there were not enough students for ninth and tenth grades.[7] After an announcement that a Farm School was being created not far from Shlisselburg, which provided dormitories to live in, my mother and I agreed that I should attend. I studied three years there and worked as an Agronomist. I often visited my uncle in Leningrad, and during one of my visits I met my future husband. He was recently demobilized from the army. We met, fell in love, and got married.

      My husband and I had two children. I was a stay-at-home mom for some time. Eventually, I went back to work as a gardener, and then as a bookkeeper. We immigrated to the United States in 1992. I can’t say much about Leningrad. It was authoritarian, but there were certain words about Jews I will never forget. There were plenty of reasons to leave Russia, mostly due to being Jewish. I miss Leningrad, but I’m very grateful to America.

[1] Shlisselburg was know as Petrokrepost (Peter’s Fortress) from 1944 to 1992.

[2] Oreshok Fortress was built by Grand Prince Yuri of Moscow in 1323.

[3] Vladimir Lenin’s actual last name was Ulyanov.

[4] The Soviet Party School was the higher education institution which specifically trained officials for the Communist Party.

[5] A Kolkhoz was a collective farm in the Soviet Union.

[6] The Siege of Leningrad, also known as the Leningrad Blockade, was a prolonged military blockade of the city by the Germans. The siege lasted 872 days.

[7] Before 1990 there were just 10 grades in the Soviet school system.