, Rozalia Akselrod, with my future husband Sasha Serikov, during summer vacation in the Crimea. We were at the school of mountaineer instructors.
The photo was taken in 1939.
In 1937 I finished school and entered the Foreign Languages Institute. Now I believe it was my mistake. I should have become a lawyer or a doctor according to my abilities. When I was already working I often spoke in court as a public advocate. It was a custom at the time. And I did very well. But languages, they are not my field of interest. Anyway, I passed exams easily and entered the French department. Just like at school, I joined the Komsomol committee of the Institute and sang at the institute’s club.
At the institute I met my future husband, Alexander Serikov. I met him during a dance. Sasha was a student of the English department. He was four years older than me – he was born in 1915 – but he studied only one year ahead of me. In 1940 we got married. We had no wedding. We simply went to his relatives to Yeisk. His mother was a Hungarian Gypsy, and his father – a Cossack. His father was arrested and shot in 1938. Both Sasha and I could have suffered from that as well, but Sasha chose to keep it a secret. Thus, nobody in the institute knew that his father had been arrested. After his death he was rehabilitated.
My parents received Sasha very well. They had no problem that he was not Jewish. By that time, my sister had been married for the second time and her husband was also Russian.
