Dina Orlova with her classmates

This is a picture of me and my classmates from the secondary school in Ozarintsy. I am the second from the right in the second row. Our class tutor is in the center of the second row. The photo was taken in Ozarintsy in 1947. I finished two years of school before World War II. During the war there was no school in the ghetto, but I was still eager to study. I gathered other children in the ghetto, and we began to make clay bricks that we dried in the sun. Then we made a small 'doghouse' which was to serve us as a school building. Of course, this doghouse was too small and only three to four people could fit into it. When the number of us reached about 20 we studied outside or in somebody's home. We had a teacher who was a young inmate of the ghetto. There was no Jewish school in Ozarintsy after the war, so my brother and I went to the Ukrainian school. In 1946 my brother finished school and went to Chernovtsy to enter the Construction College. During the war a family from Chernovtsy had lived in our house. My mother corresponded with them after the war and they told us to move to Chernovtsy. My mother went to Chernovtsy with my brother. She didn't want him to be on his own because of his poor health. My father and I stayed in Ozarintsy. I did the housekeeping and studied, and my father worked on the collective farm. My mother often came to visit us for a few days. I became a pioneer at school. It was quite a ceremony and a great holiday for me. We were patriots of our country. Lenin and Stalin were like gods to us. We learned poems and sang songs about them. We were firmly convinced that the Soviet Union had defeated fascism thanks to the leadership of Stalin. We always celebrated Soviet holidays, organized a concert and invited our parents to attend. In the 7th grade I became a Komsomol member.