This photo shows the Academic Chorus of the Veterans of the Great Patriotic War. I am standing first on the left.
When I was a child, we had a grand piano at home, and I began to study piano when I was just a little girl.
My teacher had studied with the great Russian composer Glazunov at one time. As an adult, I sang in the academic chorus of veterans of war and labor in the Kalininsky district, where there were two Jews besides me.
We sang only Russian songs. But my granddaughter told me about the Hesed on Shpalernaya Street and since then I come here often. Now I, as my mother in her time, teach my daughter Larisa and my granddaughters to cook Jewish meals.
It’s a custom with us to celebrate Jewish holidays at home, but we do not observe Sabbath. We do not attend to the synagogue, because we are not so religious.
In Hesed I receive monthly humanitarian aid, medical help if necessary, and I visit the Club in Hesed for lectures on Judaism. I attend concerts of Jewish music at the philarmonic society. I have never been abroad, because we could never really afford it.
