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Grandma's Memoir

By Raisa Korolyova (Podorozhanskaya)

When I have time to sit quietly and reminisce about the life of my family, I think about the cataclysms that constantly shook the lives of my relatives. I lived with my mother all my life (until her death in 1979), and know about her family and the life of her parents a lot.

My mother, Hannah-Haytsa Podorozhanskaya (Levit) (middle picture on the right), was born in Ponevezh in 1896, in a large family and was the eighth child; there were ten children in total. Two more daughters were born after her birth. My grandfather Shmul Levit owned a house: on the first floor there was a shoe store, a small table for students and two rooms that he rented out to students. This small business provided a good living for their large family.

Levit family; Hannah is in the red frame

When the children grew up, they dispersed all over the world. One of my mother's brothers lived in Africa. The youngest sister, Lyuba (Libby) went to America. By the time World War I broke out, Hannah's family had fled from Ponevezh to the city of Kremenchug in Ukraine. They had lost all their possessions and, as my mom used to recall, the Germans had taken all their gold jewelry.

In 1919, a soldier was walking past the house they were renting. He noticed a beautiful girl with the hair as black as a raven's wing and black eyes. My mother, according to her older sister and her other relatives, was the most beautiful of the sisters; during the time when her father used to own a store, he would ask her to work there to attract customers with her beauty. So this soldier was Abram Itskhov Podorozhansky (picture on the right), the head of a hospital pharmacy stationed in the Kremenchug division. My father, Abram, graduated from Kiev University with honors in 1911. He was accepted to this university, overcoming the ethnic quota (no more than six percent of the total number of applicants accepted to that college could be Jews). Kremenchug was my father's hometown. There were three brothers and a sister in their family. At the time described, my grandfather was no longer alive: he died in 1914 from cholera. My father's mother gave birth to her eldest son at 15, she was married at 14. Dad loved to recall how children climbed into the attic, where they kept a wadded underskirt and a wadded bra, which grandmother wore on her wedding day, to look more chubby. The children tried on these props and giggled.

 

...The young people fell in love and got married. Mom was twenty-three, Dad - twenty-nine. In 1920, in Kremenchug, they had a son, Joseph. There was a great famine in Ukraine. My mother's parents returned to Panevezys, partially rebuilt their house and store. Mom received a letter from her older sister Revekka Meyerovich with an invitation to come to Yaroslavl, Russia, where she could find work and housing. By that time, my father had already been demobilized, and the family moved to Yaroslavl. When they applied for a passport, the passport officer advised them to replace the “difficult” names with more familiar-sounding ones. Mom changed from Khana-Khaitsa Shmuleyevna to Anna Samuilovna, and Dad changed from Abram-Itskhov Ioselevich to Abram Iosifovich. With these new names they had lived their entire life. 

***

…My mother's older sister Rivka (Revekka Shmuleyevna), who invited her to Yaroslavl, was married to Lipman Meyerovich. He came to Yaroslavl from Lithuania in 1919 and got a job at the Severohod (shoe) factory. He later became the chief specialist at the technical control department for military footwear and had a personal stamp.His wife, my mother's sister, had a severe heart disease. Despite the doctors’ prohibitions, she gave birth to two sons - Moses and Marcus (Meyerovich family picture - below, Marcus' picture on the right).

Lipman spoke Yiddish perfectly, and he had a whole library of books in this language at home. Once or twice a month, Jewish couples would gather at the Meyerovichs' house, and Lipman would very artistically read Sholom Aleichem. These literary evenings continued until the beginning of the WWII. My mother, who also spoke Yiddish, was a regular at them. Sometimes she was asked to sing - she had a good voice and a huge repertoire of soulful Jewish songs.

 

The elder son of the Meierovichs, Moses (Mikhail), was born in Lithuania in 1910. He was homeschooled by private teachers, who admitted he was very gifted. Later he would study at the Leningrad Literary Institute. Moses also spoke Yiddish perfectly, and while being a student, he began studying Hebrew and collect materials for a book about Schliemann that he was planning to write.

 

After graduating from the college, Moses moved to Moscow and began working at the publishing house “Molodaya Gvardiya”, where a number of children's and youth books are published under his editorship. In 1938, his book “Schliemann" was published, and he became a member of Writers' Union of the USSR. This could open some new horizons for him, but the WWII started, and Moses goes to the front.

 

The encirclement ring of the German army at Stalingrad divided into two parts - south and north - was shrinking. On January 31, 1943, the southern group capitulated, and on February 2, the northern one, but various groups continued to resist for several more days. On February 2, 1943. Moses Meyerovich received a mortal wound in the stomach. They tried to save him, they put him on a stretcher, to be transported across Volga to the hospital, and right and that time the political instructor from the headquarters brought a message: “Mikhail Meyerovich is being called to Moscow, to the publishing house of the the Central Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League “Molodaya Gvardiya”. But it did not mean to happen… A few hours later, Mikhail Meerovich passed away.

 

His book "Schliemann" reached the readers and in 1966 was republished. Moses' yonger brother Markus Meierovich was born in Panevezys in 1914. He graduated from high school in Yaroslavl, participated in school theater productions all the time, arranged home performances, danced and sang very well. Marcus was a cheerful, handsome man with a great sense of humor and ingenuity. He graduated from the Leningrad Pedagogical Institute, but did not become a teacher, instead he became a performer, worked at the Song and Dance Ensemble of the Northern Navy.

 

At the very beginning of the war, Markus Meyerovich, was killed by a blast wave while performing on a warship. Unable to bear the loss of her sons, Revekka died in 1944 at the age of 54. Lipman lived for another 24 years after her death. And at the age of 90 he remained very interesting and outgoing person. He died in 1969 at the age of 92.

***

...When my family arrived in Yaroslavl, the city had just recovered from the White Guard rebellion, and many houses had been destroyed by cannonballs. My parents were given two rooms in a communal apartment with a hole from a cannonball. My father went to work at the labor exchange as an accountant (he had that qualification as well), and after a while he was invited to work at the pharmacy department and began to combine two jobs. In 1929, my father was sent to Lyubim in the Yaroslavl region, where he opened several pharmacies. The family settled at a pharmacy in a landowner's estate. Sometimes I remember how in the winter wolves would come right up to the house and howl very terribly. We lived there for only a year, and then we moved to Rostov the Great. Dad became a pharmacy manager and also started to help opening pharmacies throughout the Rostov district. This work was quite dangerous at that time, gangsterism was widespread, but my father's trips provided for the family: in the 1930s and 1931s, there was a famine, my father brought a lot of vegetables from the villages, he could buy honey, flour. But the main thing that saved the family from starvation was the parcels from Ponevezh from my mother's parents.

 

A small digression. In our apartment, which consisted of two rooms (we lived at the time near a pharmacy), one room was very large, there was an oak table in it and quite often in the evenings the intelligentsia of Rostov gathered. Doctors, pharmacists, teachers. Among them were poets, singers, orators. My mother sang beautifully, she knew many songs. Everyone was enthusiastically playing lotto, the game was small, but they played passionately. But the most important thing, why I remembered this, is that for such gatherings my mother steamed beets and turnips in two large cast iron pots. It was a tasty treat for such a large company.

 

I remember another holiday potluck. On the eve of the holiday, a fisherman friend of my mother's named Ganyushin came and offered a pike 1 m 25 cm long, he caught it in Lake Nero, he couldn't sell it, who would need such a giant? Mom talked to her friends and made stuffed fish from this huge pike. Mom cooked wonderfully, and then everyone remembered this delicious event for a long time.

 

So we lived in Rostov until 1935, and then moved to Yaroslavl. My brother was sent to study in Yaroslavl even earlier. In Rostov, he was hounded by older guys who were connected with bandits; they demanded that he steal ether from a pharmacy to put people to sleep on trains. My brother refused, and he was brutally beaten, for some time he was in a hospital in Yaroslavl.

 

So, he began to study at the Karl Marx School, at that time it was the most prestigious school in Yaroslavl. By nature, he was a leader. His compositions were noted as the best, he drew beautifully, had a category in chess, won competitions. He wrote poetry. He drew cartoons and composed epigrams for them, apparently sometimes about teachers on the last page of the notebook, for which dad was called to school more than once.

 

Dad worked a lot, was very passionate about creating medicines for skin diseases. He had a lot of prescriptions created by him, and one of them saved the weavers of the cord factory from an occupational skin disease. At the same time as managing the pharmacy, he supervised the construction of a new pharmacy building on Lenin Avenue, 8. Unfortunately, he did not get to work in the new building.

 

In 1937, intensive construction of the rubber-asbestos plant continued, a lot of specialists came, dad was well acquainted with many of them. He was a very kind, well-educated person, people were drawn to him. But we lived in terrible times. The specialist, having worked for some time, disappeared, most often at night, and never returned. At the end of the summer of 1938, my father was called to the gray house, and returned home sick. At that time in Yaroslavl there was a very famous therapist Zalkind Rafail Lvovich, my mother called him to dad, and he diagnosed: an acute attack of angina pectoris (myocardial infarction). 14 days later, my father died. He was only 48 years old. He did not tell my mother why he was called, and when she asked, he pressed his lips together, touching them with his finger.

In 1939, my brother graduated from school. Despite our poverty, my mother had a dream for her children to receive higher education. My brother, hoping for a scholarship, went to Moscow, entered the law school and got a job as an artist at VDNKh. My mother's friend from Ponevezhis, Lyubov Efimovna Neiman (pictured above), lived in Moscow. This woman tried to help Joseph as much as she could.

 

Our favorite and our guardian angel, a person of extraordinary kindness and nobility, Lyubov Efimovna Neiman, was born in 1894 in a town near Ponevezh. When she went to study at the Ponevezh Gymnasium, fate brought her together with the Levit family. She rented a bed from them and began to eat in their small dining room, became friends with my mother, Khana-Khaitsa Shmuleyevna.

Two years before finishing school, Lyuba's parents die, and she is forced to leave school and go to work, but her mother's father intervenes in the situation. He says to Lyuba: "Stay with us, sleep with Hana, with a large family, another mouth is not a hindrance." So Lyuba lived in the Levit family for two years, as a daughter. In the first years of Soviet power, Lyuba went to Moscow, entered the 2nd Moscow Medical Institute and after graduating, stayed to practice medicine in Moscow. She did not have her own family, and she helped our family as best she could all her life. Aunt Lyuba came to us in Lyubim, Rostov and Yaroslavl. Always with gifts. She dressed and shod us, especially after dad died. She helped my mother, and I graduated from the institute. There were times when I was completely dressed in Aunt Lyuba's things. In 1941, she volunteered for the front and reached Berlin with a front-line hospital. After the Victory, she returned to Moscow, to her seven-meter room in Stoleshnikov Lane. The communal apartment was a former hotel, described by Gilyarovsky, the corridor with rooms stretched for 120 meters. She lived in this "mansion" until 1972 or 1973, until this building was torn down. When we came to Aunt Lyuba, we managed to fit three or four of us into this room.

 

I also remember from those times that every time my mother came to Moscow, she would always go to the Jewish Theater with Lyuba. They knew Yiddish very well, they were acquainted with the leading actor of the theater, Veniamin Zuskin, who was also from Ponevezh.

 

Until 1971, Lyuba worked as the chairperson of the VTEK of the district. Strict, incorruptible; During the "Doctors' Plot" she was asked to submit a resignation letter, but she said: "There is a reason - fire me, I will not quit myself." Apparently, they did not find anything to complain about, and she stayed working. This kind, sweet woman died at 86, having fallen asleep on the couch. She prayed to God for such a death all the time, and he rewarded her with it, not allowing her to become a burden to people.

 

For our family, Lyubov Efimovna Neiman was a talisman, an advisor and a best friend. Even my children were caressed and gifted by her. I have kept the bright image of this woman, my second mother, all my life.

 

... In 1941, Joseph completed two years of college and was called up to the labor front to build fortifications near Moscow. The whole group signed up for the front to defend Moscow. He did not even come home to say goodbye. All the events happened with lightning speed, like the very beginning of the war.

 

After some time, my mother and I received a letter saying that the editorial board of one of the front-line newspapers had printed Joseph's correspondence - a story from the front - and was asking him to come to the editorial board. So he became a correspondent for the front-line newspaper "Forward to the West".

For some time, their division fought on the Leningrad Front near the Lovat River. I remember a few words from a poem he sent after breaking out of encirclement:

 

... It is hard for us, my friend, to die

On the distant Lovat River...

The Lovat is wide and deep...

 

As he wrote to us, 10-15 percent of the soldiers broke out of encirclement. Whole companies died of hunger. Joseph sent a photograph from that time. He was thin beyond recognition, his curly, lush hair had turned into straw-colored strands with gray hair. Then everything was restored. He wrote that he was saved by laying the foundation for his health in his distant childhood. Our Jewish mother put proper nutrition first. We were very poorly dressed, but the silver from my mother's dowry, the dollars sent by her parents - everything went to Torgsin and only for feeding the children.

 

The army went on the offensive. Joseph became an officer and sent us a certificate. We began to correspond more often. He sent us newspapers with his essays and poems. I sent him my small photograph, and his answer is still stored in my memory:

 

... Life is changeable, and who knows,

Anything in the world can happen.

I only want to kiss

These lips that have become stern,

I only want the eyes,

That are full of sadness in the photo,

No longer saddened by tears,

So that they sparkle like a flame...

So that I could enter the house,

The house where my mother and sister Raya are,

And tell them one thing:

"I congratulate you on the Victory!"

And for now - the days at the front,

Mines are exploding somewhere.

We are alone, sister,

You are warmed in my heart.

 

After the war, Joseph was in Riga, from there he went to Ponevezyes and learned that his grandparents, mother's younger sister Ginda with her family, and brother with his family were taken to the ghetto and died. My brother could not find any of our relatives. According to my mother, 12-15 of her close relatives died. The division where Joseph served was transferred to Moscow, and he left the Army with great difficulty. He had an acquaintance at TASS USSR who suggested to him: if you get your passport corrected, try to change your patronymic and nationality and you will get a job at Komsomolskaya Pravda. Joseph was outraged and insulted by this proposal. The front-line soldiers returned from the dirty war pure and naive, they did not know that in Russia, too, clouds were gathering over the Jews, despite how many of them died at the hands of the Nazis.

Joseph and his wife, front-line surgeon Sofya Zamvelevna Bak (picture on the left, on the right he is pictured with Raisa), went to Chita and began working in the Chita regional newspaper as the head of the literary department. Several of his books were published in Chita - front-line memoirs, humorous stories, and after a trip to China, he wrote a book "In the Country of Zhongguo" - notes of a tourist (1956). In the book, describing his trip, Joseph admired the efficiency, unpretentiousness of the Chinese, their obsession with achieving their goals. He foresaw their future prosperity, which they would achieve with their discipline and commitment.

 

He worked very well in the east in Chita, but he was drawn closer to home. Having received an offer from the Kuibyshev regional newspaper, he moved there. But he was always drawn to Yaroslavl, and he fulfilled his dream and moved to Yaroslavl. He starts working at the Severny Rabochy newspaper as the head of two departments at once. By that time, my mother's older sister's husband was left alone and Iosif and his wife began to live with him. Two years later, he received an apartment on Rybinskaya Street. He publishes a lot in Yaroslavl; a rare issue of the newspaper comes out without his articles, essays, feuilletons or stories. But despite his desire to live in Yaroslavl, fate takes a different turn. A woman from Chita gives birth to a boy from him; he always dreamed of a child. Having parted with his first wife on friendly terms, he leaves for his newly formed family. Together with his family, he moves to Minsk, where he gets a job as a correspondent, and then as the editor-in-chief of TASS Belarus. He worked there until the end of his life - until 1981.

 

He lived in Minsk, had an interesting creative job, but still longed to go to Yaroslavl, and after he suffered a heart attack, he began to talk and write about how the Belarusian soil was rocky and hard, and he wanted to be buried in his native and soft Yaroslavl soil. It just so happened that he came on a business trip to TASS USSR and went to visit us in Yaroslavl for a couple of days. Two days later, on September 15, 1981, he died of a heart attack at night. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Churilkovo.

 

His son Mikhail Iosifovich graduated from the Moscow Automobile and Road Institute, but followed in his parents' footsteps and became a journalist. Now he publishes the newspaper "Autoreview", being its editor-in-chief and owner. His son continues the Podorozhansky family.

***

 

... I have lived in Yaroslavl all my life. For a long time, my family and I lived on Lenin Avenue (then Shmidt Avenue). In the distant war years, the hardest time for my mother and me was the winter of 1941 and 1942. The apartment had no steam heating, we had to light the stove, but there was not a single piece of wood. We installed a cast-iron pot, as everyone did then. In the evening, when it got dark, we went out to collect chips near the sheds. It was embarrassing, but this was the only way to warm up a little and boil water. The electric stove burned out, and buying a coil for it cost 400 rubles, my mother's salary as a nurse was 410 rubles. The ration cards for cereals were enough for 10 noodle soups at the factory kitchen, on other days we took cabbage soup. We drained the water and ate that. We received 700 grams of bread per day for two.

 

Since then, I have retained a love for boards and sticks; I'll see some board, stop, look and remember how much they meant to us. There was a big barbed fence near the house, some military unit was stationed there. One day, a military guy, apparently watching us collect chips, looked around and threw us a thick board over the wire. And we had a "hot" holiday.

 

I remember once I came home from school, sat down to do my homework, I was very hungry, but at home - there was nothing edible. Mom was not there, she would come home late from work. Suddenly my gaze fell on the top of the closet. There had been a bag of rye grain there for a long time, since the time when dad was alive and was engaged in preparing skin potions from sprouted rye. I took out this rye - dry, did not smell bad. I took a small wooden coffee grinder and began to crush the grain in small portions. Little by little, flour is obtained. There is water, salt, even a little oil left in the bottle. I mix the pancakes. I take a duck pan and turn the electric iron over it, it heats up. I pour my dough directly onto the iron surface, one or two spoons, it does not spread, it fries. Probably, these were the most delicious pancakes in my life. I fed them to my mother when she came home from work, she also liked them. So we ate this random supply. We cooked porridge, fried pancakes, but, of course, not on the iron.

As soon as school ended, we were sent to collective and state farms. In the fall of 1941, our whole class threshed flax; the boys had not yet been drafted into the army. We lived in an abandoned house. We did not wash for a month, but we were well-fed. We had to thresh 350 sheaves, which we managed with great difficulty, but it was such a time that we could not whine.

 

During the 1941-42 school year, the physics teacher taught us about tractor work; we studied the tractor from pictures. In the spring, we were sent to a suburban collective farm as trailer drivers. The tractor driver was about fourteen or fifteen years old. My friend, with whom we are still friends, and I had to ride behind and raise and lower the plow, cultivator, seeder, and so on throughout the sowing season.

 

And all summer and fall we worked on a suburban state farm. In the fall, the potato harvest began on the seed plot. We grew the Lorkh variety. They took our bags away, checked our pockets so that we didn’t steal the potatoes, but they didn’t scold us for 2-3 potatoes. We didn’t eat them, but collected them and dreamed of planting them in the spring. We were given a little potato for our work, and I collected a bag of about ten kilograms.

 

In the cold winter of ’42, it was also very cold at home. In the evening, we stoked our potbelly stove with whatever we had. The room heated up. We warmed the blanket, pillows, went to bed, and put the treasured bag at our feet. In the morning, we got up and put the bag under the pillow and blanket in a warm bed, since the room was below zero degrees when we arrived. And so, day after day, all winter long, we did this operation.

 

In the spring, I bought an interesting brochure on how to make a lot from a small amount of seed material. Diligently, exactly as per the book, I cut our entire gold reserve into pieces, each piece with two or three eyes, and laid them out on the windowsill (fortunately, we had a sunny side). Mom, coming home from work, was horrified that I had ruined all our hopes. She grieved, even cried, but what's done is done.

 

It was time to plant. Mom was given a piece of lawn near the clinic. We dug up the plot lengthwise and crosswise, planted exactly as per the book, and looked after it well. And we began to fear for the safety of our harvest. Once, during my shift, Mom told me to carefully look at what had grown under a branch. I looked and said that I had felt a large stone. When there were no people around, we took out this stone - it was a potato the size of a large fist. The next morning we began to dig. People stopped nearby, marveled, envied. Several people brought buckets of potatoes and began to exchange them with us for a few potatoes. Mom, having borrowed a stroller from someone, carried the potatoes home. The distance from the hospital to home was about a kilometer. We fussed around all day. There was a lot of joy, hunger was overcome. I was doubly happy - the book did not let me down. Maybe this incident in life influenced my choice of profession - I became a scientist agronomist.

 

... I graduated from school No. 37, studied well and could have entered, probably, any institute. It was easier then. Almost all the girls from our girls' class, including me, applied to the Leningrad Institute of Railway Transport, where they were accepted. I studied for one year, and then the blockade of Leningrad was lifted, and the institute was urgently returned to Leningrad. I could not go to another city. Mom received only 410 rubles, we lived so poorly that it is impossible to imagine now. Mom really wanted me to study, but this departure would have ruined her, during the war she had acute dystrophy twice.

 

I stayed in Yaroslavl, fortunately an agricultural institute opened near our house, and entered the agronomy department. I had no idea what would happen to me in the future, but they gave me lunches and extra bread. As I described earlier, I already had some experience in agricultural work: starting from the eighth grade, we were sent to work every summer on a state farm, the lands of which began at the Moscow railway station and, with some interruption, stretched to the current oil refinery. Working on the state farm saved my mother and me from a hungry existence: we were given various vegetables for our earnings.

 

In 1942, I received ten kilograms of sugar beets for my work. My mother, a kind soul, the first thing she did was buy some cranberries at the market, make some jam with beets and gather the whole building for tea. The tea was carrot, and everyone spread the jam on their own piece of bread, but it was a wonderful tea party in honor of the October Revolution. People lived very amicably then, there were about twelve children in the building, and everyone tried to help each other as much as they could.

 

... I often remember my beloved mother, reflect on her life, on the fact that this smart, beautiful, talented woman did not have her own personal feminine happiness. She saw her calling in helping other people, taking care of them, sacrificing herself.

 

In our family there lived a nanny, an illiterate and not very attractive woman, but very kind and affectionate to us. In terms of feminine beauty, she had no comparison with my mother, but... after my father's sudden death, we found out that she was pregnant by him. Mom, of course, was shocked and devastated.

Mom, passing the boy off as her nephew, began to fight for his health. She got him diet food. He did not know what sugar or white bread were. He went to bed well-fed, but could not fall asleep unless there was a piece of bread under his pillow. Mom consulted a speech therapist. She began to follow all his instructions, and the boy began to pronounce letters and words correctly, and grew stronger. Thanks to Moscow friends who had two older sons, we dressed my adopted brother very beautifully and elegantly. Mom treated him, contacted specialists, got him vouchers to sanatoriums, but he was diagnosed with rheumatism of the heart, a disease that tormented him all his life.

 

Valyusha went to school with the same level of preparation as the other children. He continued to live with us for about ten years. A couple of years after their arrival, Mom got used to her pain, and the nanny began to visit us often.

 

So these women began to coexist peacefully, even helping each other in adversity. In 1949, I got married, and my husband was very sympathetic and loving towards this ten-year-old boy, and Valyusha simply idolized him.

 

At my mother's request, we took him to matinees at the theater, especially when the opera came. My mother always made sure that he developed as harmoniously as possible, read a lot, and he grew up to be a good person. Valyusha successfully graduated from school and entered the pedagogical institute in the history department.

 

I believe that my mother accomplished the noblest human feat.

 

Throughout our lives, Valya (pictured below with me) and I were friends, felt like close relatives, helped each other get out of difficult situations. My children also loved Valentin. Unfortunately, he, like my older brother, lived only 60 years.

...Even before graduating from the institute, I married a World War II veteran, a student at the Technological Institute, Igor Iosifovich Korolev (pictured below). In the spring of 1950, I received a diploma as a "scientist agronomist" and was assigned to our city greening department, and at the end of the year, our first child, Yurik, was born. I was on maternity leave for only 35 days, and then I went back to work, became the technical director of the city greening department, where I worked for more than ten years.

Having gotten involved in the work, I realized that this was my calling, that I would never change this occupation. Creating beauty, transforming the city, growing flowers, making bouquets, decorating theater and club stages, bringing joy to people - all of this fascinated me very, very much. Especially a lot was done for landscaping and flower decoration of the city for the 950th anniversary of Yaroslavl. The then chairman of the city executive committee, Yuri Dmitrievich Kirillov, paid a lot of attention to landscaping the city, its cleanliness and beauty. In 1960, a decree of the Supreme Council of the RSFSR was issued on awarding a large group of Yaroslavl residents with certificates of the Supreme Council for their great contribution to the improvement of the city. Yuri Dmitrievich Kirillov was awarded this decree, and my contribution to the beauty of Yaroslavl was also noted by this decree.

 

In those years, I was a deputy of the City Council and met the director of the NYa NPZ, he was the head of one of the groups of deputies. We liked each other: great enthusiasts, each in love with his work and profession. He began to say that he needed exactly such people at the plant. The construction of the plant was declared a Komsomol construction project. Boris Pavlovich Mayorov, an experienced builder, described the future of the plant and the possibility of creating a greenhouse farm so beautifully that I agreed to his proposal and at the end of 1961 transferred to work at the plant. For 7 years, I traveled to the plant from Lenin Avenue (this is a very long distance), since the promises of both an apartment and a greenhouse were not fulfilled immediately. Boris Pavlovich became seriously ill, went blind, and the person who replaced him had no obligations towards me, and I had to spend a lot of effort to show my organizational skills, demonstrate my knowledge and skills in this team of many thousands, so that they would believe me and appreciate my professional abilities. Our landscaping department team consisted of over 30 people, I tried to make them fall in love with my work, and I succeeded, I tried to instill in my subordinates that we not only work, but create beauty that people admire, and therefore help to live beautifully. We built many green squares, parks, greened the pioneer camp and the health resort. Of course, it was a time of enthusiasm and labor zeal. One hundred to two hundred people came to our clean-up days. The directors contributed to this in every possible way, organizing people, providing equipment and resources.

 

I had to travel to nurseries as far as the Caucasus, so more than 50 different cultures were collected in the park. We took part in annual regional, city and district exhibitions of nature conservation, each time taking prizes, receiving certificates, awards, prizes, diplomas. I always remember my working life with a joyful smile, because it brought me great satisfaction.

 

Despite my passion for work, I paid a lot of attention to my children. My mother always helped me in raising my children - a smart, educated woman who loved to read, and she instilled many of the things she loved in my children. Both my son and daughter have higher education. In our family, we always had such an attitude that the children knew from the first grade that they should study for a long time and successfully. Now we can say that the children have achieved considerable success in life. After graduating from the Polytechnic Institute, my son worked for 27 years at a synthetic rubber plant, going all the way from an ordinary engineer to the CEO. My daughter Olga's business is no less successful. She graduated with honors from a music school, married the composer Yakov Lazarevich Kazyansky, gave birth to two daughters, and successfully graduated from the Gorky Conservatory.

Picture on the left - Raisa with her daughter Olga and granddaughters Anna and Kate.

On the right - Hannah with her great granddaughters.

In 1996, being a teacher of music subjects at the school of arts, she won the competition and became "Teacher of the Year of the Yaroslavl Region", in 1998 her daughter was awarded the title of "Honored Teacher of the Russian Federation".

 

So, it turns out that in family matters I am a very happy person, because the success of my children is the greatest parental joy. I would like to tell you about another joy of mine: both my children have wonderful families, both my daughter and son celebrated their silver weddings against the background of my husband and I, who celebrated our golden wedding. My grandchildren also make my heart happy: Kostik, Yuri's son, after graduating from the technical university, works with his father, he recently had a son, Georgy, my great-grandson; Anya and Katya graduated from the pedagogical university, they sing wonderfully in Yiddish songs that their great-grandmother once sang. That's how much joy there is in my life.

 

2003

P.S. Raisa passed away in 2016 in Yaroslavl, Russa

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