Anna Dremlug with her family

This photo was taken in 1949 in outskirts of Leningrad. Here you can see me, my husband Valentin and our son Igor.

When I studied on the third course of Institute, in 1946 father bought a voucher to the health resort "Shirokoe", voucher, happy from all points of view. They settled me in a club, called 'monkey place'. And my future husband Valentin Dremlug lived just in opposite - at so-called 'blue datsha'.

So, when we met again in Leningrad, we began being friends, and then, in November he made an engagement, nevertheless we knew each other for three months only.

We married in January of 1947. First there was a wedding without any registration, and then we went to ZAGS and registered our relations.

My father didn't like my husband at first, not because he was not Jewish, but due to that fact that he was not tall and strong man. He even blamed my mother, who went to Leningrad to check my choice before the wedding took place.

But later they had normal relations, and we never had any troubles because of his nationality.

His mother' parents were peasants, and his father's parents were craftsmen. Apparently, all his ancestors are Russians, but my mother-in low told that her grandfather was a Nikolas' soldier, a baptized Jew. I don't know if that is true, probably, she just wanted to say something pleasant.

His father Valentin was responsible for electricity in Petergof Palace [summer residence of Russian Emperors, was built in 1720s by Peter the First], he swam with tsar on 'Shtandard' [famous ship, which the last Russian tsar used to swim on]. AAnd his mother Lidia Alexandrovna was a florist.

She graduated from genetics faculty of Leningrad University and developed new different sorts of flowers. She worked on the so-called control-experienced station in Pushkin [one of Leningrad outskirts, got its name after Alexander Pushkin, before October Revolution of 1917 used to be Tsar Selo, or Tsar Village].

My husband, Valentin, entered the Gidrography Institute even before the World War II but he didn't have any chance to graduate. He passed his finals in Krasnoyarsk [big city in Siberia]. After the war had been finished, he went to get a PhD degree in Leningrad; in 1949 he fulfilled his academic program and got a job of the head of sub-faculty.
He worked in that Highest Arctic College till he was retired in 1980s. He was assistant professor there and read lectures.

Our son Igor was born in December of 1947, he lives in Leningrad. He followed in his fathers footsteps: he was involved in ocean researchers, went to expeditions.

Igor, of course, always knew that he is a Jew, that his grandfathers and grandmothers were Jews. I don't know for sure, nor how, neither when he learned it. I remember only that once he went home and said: "Mom, you don't know Jewish language yourself and didn't teach me too".