Sarra Shpitalnik, her husband Moisey Shpitalnik and her mother Beila Molchanskaya

This is me, my husband Moisey Shpitalnik and my mother Beila Molchanskaya. This photo was taken in Kishinev in 1987. This was my mother's last photo which had was taken on the 90th birthday of our family friend Zalman Goldstein. I worked at the Medical College for 34 years as director of the bibliographic department and I also held the position of junior employee translating articles from foreign magazines after work. I was good at foreign languages, and even translated from Dutch. One of my friends in college used to say, 'She knows everything, but Hungarian.' Many lecturers in the college are still very grateful to me: many candidates and doctor dissertations went through my hands. I remember one of them: he suddenly bumped into a medical book in Japanese and somebody told him, 'Well, why don't you talk to Sarra Shpitalnik.' My reputation was working for me. In 1984 I became a pensioner, but I stayed at work part-time. My mother broke her hip and could only get up from her bed when Moisey and I supported her. She spent most of the time in her room reading and watching television. When perestroika began, my mother watched all information programs, particularly, when Gorbachev spoke. She treated him with great sympathy and when he appeared on the screen, she said, 'It's like one's own father comes into the room.' As for me, I lost my respect for him, when he interrupted Sakharov at the congress of deputies. However, we were enthusiastic about perestroika. There were many interesting publications in the press, something that we could only discuss with our closest friends, and there were books published which had been banned before. My mother died of cancer in 1989. We buried her in the Doina, in the Jewish sector since the Jewish cemetery had been closed by then.