Fania Brantsovskaya with her husband Mikhail Brantsovskiy and daughter Vita Safian

Here I am with my husband Mikhail Brantsovskiy and our older daughter Vita (Safian, nee Brantsovskaya), photographed in Vilnius in 1953. In 1945 the factory where my husband was working burnt down. We were very concerned that my husband might get in trouble. There were many people taken to jail for sabotage or negligence. Fortunately, my husband's investigation officer from the NKVD happened to be a decent man. He knew my husband was not to blame. My husband went to work as chief of department in the Lithuanian Industrial Council and then worked as chief of Department of State Planning of Lithuania for 25 years. He finished Moscow Institute of Engineering and Economics extramurally. We joined the Communist Party following our convictions. We joined it very consciously. We were given two rooms in a four-room apartment. In 1950 my first daughter, Vita was born in this apartment. This name means 'life' in Latin. This was what my husband and I valued to the utmost and what we paid a high price for. In 1956 we received a separate apartment on Gorkogo Street. This was one of the first houses with central heating in Vilnius. It was very cold in the first year. In 1958 my second daughter was born. We named her Dina after my husband's mother. The children went to a nursery school and a kindergarten. They had no grandmothers to help us raise them. My husband held official posts and earned well, but my salaries were rather low. We raised our children to be hardworking and modest. I remember the following incidence. My husband had an office car to take him to work; we never owned a car or a dacha. One day his new driver arrived in the morning to take my husband to work and our daughters to the kindergarten. But my husband said he would walk to work and our daughter was ultimately disappointed considering that it was a cold nasty day. My husband told him to drive back to the office.