Berta Mazo and her great-granddaughter

Here you can see me together with my great-granddaughter Alissa. The photo was taken in St. Petersburg in 2001.

Our elder daughter Mara was born in 1941. In summer of 1941 we rented dacha near Tosno [a suburb of St. Petersburg]. At that time Daddy worked in Tosno, and my husband worked in Kolpino. War burst out when my elder daughter was about 5 months old. We left almost everything and managed to escape before Germans occupied Tosno. We went to evacuation with my sister (she was 13 at that time), my baby daughter and my Daddy.

While we were in evacuation, a family from a destroyed house lived in our apartment in Leningrad. Almost no furniture remained in it. Later a husband of the woman died, and she remained alone in one of our rooms. Of course, it grieved me to see the changed city after our return: I saw a lot of destroyed houses.

After the end of the war we went on keeping in touch with our relatives. Political situation did not have great influence upon us. Everything was quiet and stable at our working places. We kept an eye on political events, but never discussed them at home. Neither me nor my husband (he was always held in great respect by his coworkers) ever came across any manifestations of anti-Semitism.