Ada Dal

This is me, five and a half months old. The photo was taken in Kiev in 1933. I was born into the Jewish family of Veniamin Dal and Maria Vulih in Kiev on 30th July 1932. We lived in a communal apartment where our family had two rooms. One of them had a big balcony facing the street. Two other families lived in this apartment. One was a Jewish family and the other one was Ukrainian, but we lived like good neighbors should and had no arguments. We had lots of books at home. My parents read classic and modern literature in Russian, and newspapers, of course. I remember that later, I read, like my mother. I liked it a lot. I liked fairy tales, children's poems by Barto, Mikhalkov, Marshak, the fairy tales of the Grimm Brothers, etc. I had an excellent memory when I was a child and I knew a lot by heart. I learned to read and write when I was about eight. I started school in 1940 and finished the 1st grade in May 1941.