Ninel Kunina with her brother Vladimir Aronson

This is me with my brother Vladimir. The photo was taken in 1933 in Leningrad.

I was born in Leningrad on 10th August 1929. You have already realized that my father was a person with firm ideological principles, a Party and Soviet man. He gave my brother the name Vladimir after Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s death in 1924. And I was given the name Ninel. Reading this name back to front you get Lenin.

I was brought up by Grandma, as Mom worked a lot. How were we educated? I danced a lot at home, that was why parents placed me in a ballet school, but I didn’t turn out to be a ballerina. Then my parents bought my brother and me a violin, as they wanted my brother and me to study music, but this also was not successful. We had a gramophone, at that time it was very fashionable, and my parents bought a lot of records. I still keep them. My brother and I listened to music including Dad’s Jewish records. Daddy instilled in us love for animals: we had a dog, a German shepherd Ralph. There were fish in our fish-tank and white mice with red eyes, as I recall now.

Daddy bought my brother and me bicycles and the three of us rode out, we rode out along Zodchy Rossy Street, there were no trams and cars at the time and we easily bicycled as much as we liked. On their days off my parents took us in the country, we visited Sosnovka for picnics.