Berta Ribush

This is my mother, Berta Ribush as a one-year-old. The photo was taken in the photo studio of A. Kononov in Pskov in 1904.

My mother was born in Pskov in 1903. She went to school from 1910 to 1917. It was a Russian school; I think, it was a girls' grammar school. In 1924 she moved to Leningrad to study and never returned to Pskov. She entered the Military Medical Academy in Leningrad, graduated from it and worked as an oculist up to 1937. She got acquainted with her future husband in 1925 in the Military Medical Academy. They were schoolmates. They had a common-law marriage, without any religious ceremonies and official registration. This was actually common in the young Soviet intellectual circles of the time. After my grandpa died my grandma moved to live with them. I don't remember my mother telling me about her childhood. I didn't live with her for a long time together, especially as a child; besides, I never asked her to tell me about her life.