My name is Valentina Rubinstein, maiden name Kolodezs. I was born in Novograd-Volynskiy, Ukraine, on August 1, 1937. When World War II  started my family (my mother, father, oldest sister Bella and I) lived in Zhytomyr. My father, Srul Kolodezs, was an accountant. My mother, Chava Kolodezs (her maiden name was Feldshteyn), was a dressmaker. Bella was my father’s daughter from his first marriage. Her mother died when Bella was two years old. My father met my mother and they got married.

      I was four years old when the war began. I remember the day when my father came home in a uniform and said that the war had started and that we should get ready to leave as soon as possible. A car picked us up and, under a hail of falling bombs, we went to the train station and were put in a boxcar. I felt like I could barely breathe, and my mother pleaded with the people to open the door just to let some fresh air in, but it was impossible.

      We arrived in Penza, Russia, where we waited a whole month until my family was assigned to go to Bukhara, Uzbekistan. In Bukhara we lived in a storage building where the locals stored coal. My family stayed there until 1945. The living conditions were awful: we suffered from the heat and from hunger. My father worked as an accountant at a local prison and my mother fixed and repaired clothing for people. Bella went to school and was rewarded with extra pieces of bread for being a top student. She always shared with me.

      We returned to Zhytomyr after the war ended, but our apartment was occupied by some sort of business. We had to move into a shack at my father’s workplace. We eventually moved to a town called Rovno, where my father got a job at the Ministry of Internal Affairs as an accountant. We lived in one small room together, and, although life was difficult, we were happy: we had survived!

      I finished the 10th grade in Rovno, but because the town didn’t have any academic institutions I went to Odessa to get higher education.^[1] My uncle lived there, so I had a place to stay. I tried to get into one of the technical schools but the competition was very high and I didn’t get in. I came back to Zhytomyr where my sister lived at the time.

      The following year I moved to Tashkent, Uzbekistan. I applied to a Polytechnic Institute, passed the exams, and got in. I graduated with a degree in Silicates Technologies.^[2] After graduation, I married and worked at a lab where we performed experiments with various materials, such as cement and other silicates. After that, I worked at an engineering company that designed reinforced concrete factories.

       My sister has lived in the United States since 1974. She sent us the paperwork to immigrate, and in July 1993 we moved to Tucson, Arizona. Two of my daughters and their families came with us, and my other daughter with her family moved to Israel.

^[1] Before 1990 schooling in the Soviet Union consisted of 10 grades.

^[2] Silicates are compounds and related to a Chemistry field of study.