Rosa Sheyn

This is my mother Rosa Sheyn in exile. The picture was taken in Bakhchar in 1944.

My mother worked at brick plant in the exile. Then we received a message about my father’s death from emaciation. He died on 14th June 1942. That news killed my mother, who could hardly stand on her feet. She wouldn’t have survived in those conditions, if fate hadn’t had pity on us.

The district center of Bakhchar had remained without a dentist for some reason. Mother was called there as there was no other option for them. The chief of the polyclinic was an old lady without any education, but she was a party member. When she looked at Mother’s diploma from Tartu University she told my mother, ‘You will get the wage of a nurse as we equal that bourgeois university to a Soviet medical college.’

Mother didn’t know what to say to such unprecedented boldness. There was no use in objecting. Nevertheless, Mother was very lucky, as she worked in warm premises and in her profession. She wore a white coat and her ragged clothes were hidden and went unnoticed. We were given a place with a bed in a room, where an obstetrician lived with her daughter.