Lubov Rozenfeld’s brother Alexandr Rozenfeld

Lubov Rozenfeld’s brother Alexandr Rozenfeld

My brother Alexandr Rozenfeld. Kiev, 1946.

In 1936 my brother Alexandr Rozenfeld was born. My mother was chief editor of music radio programs at the radio committee. She spent a lot of time at work and Alexandr was raised by nanny Frosia Kostyuk, a Ukrainian woman. She loved him very much. Frosia lost her children during famine in 1933, and was very attached to our family. I have dim memories about our trip across the Ural in a freight train for coal transportation. Frosia told me that I was black with coal and when the train stopped she took me off the train to wash me. During air raids my brother screamed: ‘I don’t want to be killed by a bomb!’ When the train stopped during air raids, we jumped off to hide in the fields. We arrived at Vereschagino (about 2 thsd. km from Kiev) Molotov region. I remember that we lived in a wooden house on the 2nd floor. There was a green meadow near the house. My father worked in a railcar depot for a short time and then he volunteered to the front. My mother was chairman of a kolkhoz. They manufactured clay pots and she brought some home to cook in them. Somebody made us a steel stove with exhaust holes at the bottom. I put sticks in the stove and lit them and could see flames through the holes. In early 1944 the radio committee called for my mother from the evacuation. We went back in a freight train. It was cold and we had to burn my brother's skis. He cried a lot after them. We also sailed a boat along the Volga and I remember my mother trading clothes for food products. She gave me a piece of white brick-shaped bread with a lump of sugar: this was an incredible luxury. Then we took a train again. When we returned to Kiev, it was ruined. My mother received a dwelling from the radio committee in the very center of Kiev in Kreschatitskiy Lane. In the past it housed a brothel: on the 4th floor on both sides of a long dark curved corridor there were 11 square meter rooms. We received two rooms.

My mother sent Alexandr to a Russian school for boys à and I stayed at home with grandmother Bela. My mother was at work a whole day and Alexandr and I ran around in the yard and in the street.

I remember well Victory Day of 9 May 1945. My brother and I, my mother and grandmother were very happy. I ran into the yard: our neighbors hugged and danced and there were fireworks across the skies in the evening. My mother was happy and she cried.

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