Before the war my father, David Slopak, worked at a factory in light industry in Kishinev, Moldavia. When the war started, soldiers stopped at every house and told us to leave Kishinev immediately, because the Germans were getting very close. My oldest brother Isaak was drafted into the army right away; we never saw him again. My father’s close relatives – his aunt and her family had a hat business and were quite wealthy – all stayed in Kishinev, and all of them died.

      My parents and us four children left with our necessities and walked out of the city, and at some point were loaded onto a freight train. At Derbent, my father became sick with typhoid and we were forced to leave the train. He died there in Derbent, where we buried him. Again we traveled, this time on trains and on boats. My mother, Muntsa, became ill with malaria and was removed from one of the trains. We were told we couldn’t leave the train with her, so we continued on without her. We went all the way to Uzbekistan.

      My oldest sister Frida put me, my middle sister Etya and my younger brother in an orphanage in an Uzbeki town called Karshi. My little brother was very sick, and died shortly after that. Etya and I remained in the orphanage until the war ended. Frida got sick as well, but she healed and went to work in a tailor shop. While I was in the orphanage, someone wanted to adopt me, but my sister didn’t let this happen.

      We left the orphanage in 1945, with Frida taking me and Etya back to Kishinev. I remember that we traveled about a month on trains, and that Frida found food and water for us at every single station the train stopped. She took such a good care of us.

      We had nowhere to stay when we arrived in Kishinev. Frida found an old friend who invited us all to stay with her. We did this for a month, then went back into an orphanage. We later moved to Korneshty in Moldova’s Chedyrlunsky region. In all these places, we lived in orphanages. We eventually moved back to Kishinev.

      In 1950, I entered technical school, where I graduated in 1954. I was assigned to work in Bratushansk at a local Executive Committee, but four years later I moved back with my sister in Kishinev.

      I graduated from the Kiev Institute of National Economy in 1960 with a degree in economics, and met my future husband in 1967. We married on October 20, 1967.

     We immigrated to Tucson in 1997 with our daughter and her family.