It is 2011 and I am now eighty-two years old. While it’s awful to have to say that, I don’t feel the heavy load of previous years, even though there was the war (1941 to 1945) and my immigration. I have promised to keep our family tree for the next generation, which is dedicated to the blessed memory of our ancestors.

My great-grandmother’s name was Sura, and my great-grandfather was Isaak Lorkis. They were born in Ukraine in the 19th century. They had five children: three daughters (Berta, Fira and Basya), and two sons (Aron and Isay).

Berta was my grandmother, so I will begin with a description of her and my grandfather, Pinkhus Povolotsky. My grandfather never got to see me, as he died in January of 1929 and I was born that March. My mother said he was very kind, sympathetic, cheerful and beautiful. He loved music, played the violin, and worked in a sugar factory in the city of Cherkassy, Ukraine. My grandmother Berta was a housewife and raised the children. They lived modestly, and my grandmother dressed modestly but nicely and looked wonderful even when she was older. She had a beautiful figure and I always admired her. She died in Cherkassy at the age of 93 (in 1969), out-living my grandfather by 40 years.

My grandparents had four children: Klara (my mother), Busya, Lenya and Frida. They were very happy, and despite the fact that they lived in various cities (Moscow, Dnepropetrovsk and Cherkassy) their relationship was close, even though in those days there were no cell phones. Mostly they communicated through letters. Telephones were only at the main post offices, where there were telephone booths. Sometimes we had to make reservations to talk, waiting many hours for the operator to connect us.

Klara met the handsome Yakov Goldberg, and in 1921 they married. Klara and Yakov had two daughters: my older sister Inna (born in 1923) and me (born in 1929). Our childhood was extremely difficult because of World War II, which occurred in the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1945.

From 1936 through 1941 (prior to the war), we lived in Dnepropetrovsk, and on the first day of the war the Nazis bombed the city. Wounded soldiers were soon coming to the city and were placed in schools converted into hospitals. My mother and I cared for the wounded, but not for long because two months later – in August 1941 – the fascists were already at the city’s outskirts. My father was drafted into the army, while my mother, my sister and I tried to run from the city. We went to the railroad station and rode in boxcars crammed with so many people that we could only stand up. The trains headed east, away from Ukraine. We ran without having time to take any necessities and without a single kopek, but we were young and bravely endured the hunger, cold and heat. Low-flying enemy aircraft bombed the trains, and many people perished along the way. It’s a true miracle that we survived. The Germans were overtaking us, getting closer and closer, and we went farther and farther to the east.

Our first stop was a village in the Krasnodar region, and then in the North Caucasus – the city of Ordzhonikidze (now called Vladikavkaz). For several months I attended the sixth grade there, but when the Germans approached the city we had to move again, first to Nalchik, then to Mineralnye Vody and Pyatigorsk. It was there, on Mashuk Mountain, where we came face-to-face with German forces on motorcycles. Miraculously, one of our military vehicles picked us up and we passed by the Germans. Standing in the back of the truck, we endured the Georgian Military Road and arrived in Gori (Stalin’s birthplace), where we were immediately bombed. Barely surviving, we knew we had to move on. Our goal was to get to the town in the Ural mountains where aunt from Dnepropetrovsk had gone. It seemed to us that if we could get there we’d be safe. But it was not to be: the road to the Urals became a six-month ordeal.

At that time it was impossible to cross the Caspian Sea. Tens of thousand of people were at the large pier in Baku, living for months under the hot sun and infested with lice, waiting to cross. We were among them. When we finally did, we found ourselves in Central Asia. We were constantly hungry, dirty, and without proper clothing. Some locals brought food, water and clothes to the railroad station and distributed it to people. We reached the Urals in time to endure the cruel winter of 1941-1942.

We stopped at the Novo-Sergeevka railroad station in Orenburg region, where an elderly local woman took us in. There was a pechka (known as a burzhuika) in our small room. Our room was heated with dried cow dung which we collected on village roads. We slept on hay and ate soup made from potato peels or bran, and in the summer we lived on nature’s gifts. Soon, Inna began working in a factory and we were a little better off. Workers were given food cards for 400 grams of bread a day, and 200 grams for every dependent. We were no longer so hungry, and that’s how we lived until 1943.

Having saved money for a ticket, Inna went to Grandmother Berta’s home in Moscow to study, as she had finished her first year at Dnepropetrovsk Metallurgy Institute prior to the war. Inna graduated from the Moscow Nonferrous Metals and Gold Institute in 1947. She was assigned as a junior research associate at the Scientific Research Institute, then as shift supervisor in a Moscow factory.

After Inna went to Moscow, my mother and I went as well. We didn’t have enough money to go all the way, and I recall that we rode on a train loaded with coal. When we got off the train at Ramenskoe station, near Moscow, we had to clean ourselves as best we could at a water fountain because we were covered in coal dust. We arrived in Moscow relatively “clean.” There were five of us living with our Grandmother Berta and our Aunt Busya (my mother’s sister) in a 16-square-meter room in a communal apartment, where nine other families lived. There was one toilet and one bath for the 45 people living in the commune.

In 1944 we tracked down my father (his military unit was located in Rostov-on-Don) and reunited with him. In 1945, when he was demobilized, we returned to Dnepropetrovsk. I finished the ninth and tenth grades in Rostov-on-Don, and in 1946 I attended Dnepropetrovsk University to study chemistry, which I completed in 1951. That same year I married Mikhail Gorbakovskiy, who was nine years older than me and had been in World War II. He was 21 when the war began, and had completed his third year at the railroad institute in Dnepropetrovsk. On June 22, 1941, the students took their final examinations and were immediately mobilized. By the end of June, they were sent to dig foxholes and trenches, to build bunkers, and to install barbed wire at the city’s outskirts. This meant the students were at frontal locations practically unarmed. They were given some rifles and helmets, but hardly anyone had them. Like many students, it was the first time Mikhail had held a rifle. None of the students thought of themselves – they fought to the death defending the city.

Enveloped in smoke and flames, the city fiercely resisted. The fight was for every factory, every street, and every home. Out of the 900 students in his group, Mikhail was among only 70 who survived. For his bravery and courage, Mikhail was awarded the “Order of the Patriotic War” and a variety of other medals.

Mikhail graduated from the Transport Institute and worked as an engineer in a diesel locomotive factory. Beginning in 1956, he started teaching at an Industrial College, which he did for 25 years. For his many years of hard work, high professionalism, and for teaching young professionals, he was awarded the title “Veteran of Labor.” Mikhail died in Tucson, Arizona, in 1999.

I graduated in chemistry from the University in 1951. 1951-1952 were peak years of anti-Semitism, when the Soviets tried the Kremlin’s Jewish doctors (later rehabilitated) as enemies of the people.  I remember that when I was in my fifth year at the institute we had a meeting concerning two Jewish teachers, Kolbovsky and Shukhman. Their good names were disgraced because they had supposedly remained behind in Tashkent during the war and didn’t defend their homeland. It was decided that there was no place for them at the institute. They were thrown out of the party, and, naturally, couldn’t remain as teachers.

I started searching for a job after I received my diploma, but finding work was virtually impossible. I was refused work, under various pretexts, once those doing the hiring saw my passport.

While at the University, the Komsomol district committee knew that I was a good activist. They called a metallurgic factory and recommended me for work there, which helped me get the job. I started as a laboratory assistant, and mastered spectral-analysis. I was later asked to work at the Metallurgic Institute, where I remained for 33 years. In 1967 I defended my dissertation and was promoted to Senior Research Associate.

Many years later, in 1969, when our son Edward submitted his application to the Dnepropetrovsk Institute of Metallurgy, they wouldn’t accept his documents because there was a checkmark next to his name. This meant he had been blacklisted. It turned out that the admissions committee realized they had a large shortfall in the chemistry department, only seven people for 30 seats. Edward gave them his documents, took the entrance examinations (with excellent marks), and was enrolled for his first year. After completing that year with honors, he went to the head of the institute to request a transfer into the steel-casting department.

After graduation, my son married and worked at the Ferrous Metals Scientific Research Institute in Donetsk. He defended his dissertation and received his PhD. However, following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 – 1992, work at the institute was scaled back, and people lost their jobs. Edward and his family (his wife and her parents) decided to leave Ukraine. My sister, husband and I were left alone, and since we only had one son we decided to join him. Two years later we did just that.

Thank you, America, for the warm reception, and for giving us the ability to live in a place that cares for us.