Anna Dremlug with her collegues

Anna Dremlug with her collegues

This photo was taken in 1950s in Leningrad when I worked at the sanitary epidemiological station.

When Doctor's Plot started, I worked at the sanitary epidemiological station, and we had quite a few Jews over there. They left only two persons:

me and the main Epidemiological, all other were dismissed on grounds of staff reduction. And among them, the head, Rosenshtein, who came to me and said:

'Anna Matveevna, please write the retiring statement to free the working place' (they threw him away because there 'were no vacancies').

And my husband also said: 'Leave your work, you won't be nervous'. Anyway, in 1952 I retired and didn't go to work for couple of years.

My husband earned enough, and I didn't want to suffer from anti-Semitism. So when the situation stabilized and turned to be better, I began to work again.

But, being honest, that was the only situation, when I observed Anti-Semitism: never ever, never more it happened something bad to me because I'm a Jew.

They never oppressed, and never insulted me. I lived in Russian family, among Russians and worked where there were both Russians and Jews.

And then, thank you to protection of husband's pal Jacob Katznelson (all Valentins' friends, are, besides, Jews), I started to work at the State Institute of examination the abilities to work, in the department of placing the job for people with special needs.

Later director of the clinic department advised me to write a dissertation. I was interested in people, suffered with heart-vascular diseases, and chose the topic of 'Placing the job for people with myocardial infarct':

I studied heart-vascular pathologies, made an experiment on the Kirov factory [one of the largest metallurgical factories in whole country] and completed the dissertation in January of 1971.

After I turned fifty five, I became a part-time staff in a clinic, where I worked till 1981, when we moved to our new apartment. Here I've got a part-time job in policlinic #51;

I became social researcher in rehabilitation department and worked there for ten years. So far I have quite an impressive working experience.

As far as my husband was a famous scientist (nowadays he continues to work, the local papers write articles about him and so on) we lived not too bad, maybe, better than many others.

First we had a big apartment in the very center, and later in 1981 we moved to our new 3-room apartment, where we live till today.

We could afford a trip to the Black sea or to the sanatorium. When our son was little, we rented 'dacha'[cottage] in Zelenogorsk [small village near Leningrad, on the bank of the Finnish Gulf] and in the late 1980s we've got a piece of land.

We built summerhouse there and I grow fruits and vegetables and flowers there too, and that 'dacha' takes all our free time.
In summer we spend weeks over there.

Open this page