This is my husband Yevgeniy Makalets with our daughter Tatiana Kasymova. This photo was taken in Kishinev in 1957. My husband took our daughter for a stroll near the fountain in the town garden after the 1st May parade.
In 1949 our daughter was born. I named her Tatiana after my sister. Yevgeniy was artistic director of the 'Moldova' choir on the radio. My husband and I were of different nationalities, but it never caused any conflicts. We were a close family. Yevgeniy was a nice person: intelligent, kind, very natural and easy-going. You know, the more educated a person is, the easier it is to communicate with him. We got along well, though I was far more expansive. Our work drew us closer together, and I was his first critic. Once, his choir singers came to invite me to a jubilee of their choir saying: ‘But you are our first critic.’
Our daughter grew up in a wonderful warm atmosphere of love. Tatiana was a ‘home child.’ She didn’t go to kindergarten or any pioneer camps. When Tatiana was little, we had a housemaid who lived with us, did the cooking and cleaning. Her name was Vera, she came from a village. I often came to work and they weren’t at home. I remember once I found them near the cemetery: Vera had a date with a soldier, and the soldier was holding Tania. When we moved to the new apartment, my neighbor, who worked as a cleaning lady in the radio committee, helped me to clean my apartment. I did the cooking myself after work and often stayed in the kitchen till late. I was a good housewife and liked inviting guests.
Tatiana was a nice and quiet girl. She went to a Russian school. There was no anti-Semitism there. She had Russian, Moldovan and Jewish friends – it made no difference. Sara’s daughter Taya was her best friend. They grew up together like sisters. Tatiana fell ill in the tenth grade of school. There was an X-ray to be submitted to college with all other documents, and hers showed a dark patch in her lungs. The doctors suspected tuberculosis of her lungs. My husband and I were horrified. It’s hard to tell what we lived through. Our acquaintances helped us to arrange for Tatiana to stay in the tuberculosis hospital for a check up. When we were to go there to get to know the results, I was sitting in my editing office exhausted and asked my husband to go there alone. When he left, I couldn’t do any work. He returned. He had a habit of jokingly commanding in a military manner. He commanded: Attention! This was so different from how I felt that I recalled a Yiddish saying: ‘A goy will be a goy’, when he smiled: ‘Tomorrow our daughter is going home!’ ‘How come she’s coming home?!’ – ‘This was a shadow of her plait!’ Tatiana had gorgeous thick hair like I did when I was young. Tatiana wore it in two plaits. She forgot about one plait, when the X-ray was done.
