Tamara Koblik and her family

Tamara Koblik and her family

This is me and my family. This photo was taken in Kishinev in 1966. My husband Monia is holding our daughters Ella and Sopha. Beside me is  Allochka, our friends' daughter.

My husband Monia Koblik was born in Rashkov in 1928. Before the great Patriotic War the family moved to Rybnitsa. During the war they evacuated to Kazakhstan. After the war they lived in Rybnitsa. Monia graduated from technical College in Odessa, specialization in refrigerators.

We got married in Kishinev on 25 April 1959, when I was finishing the 5th year in college.  On this day four of my co-students had their marriage registered. After the civil ceremony we made a party for our friends in Kishinev, but we had a big wedding in Rybnitsa on 2 May. My relatives, and of course, my mother's older brother Leib from Rezina came to the wedding. Mama wanted me to have a chuppah, but I was a Komsomol member, an activist, and a member of the Komsomol committee of my course in college. I said: 'No chuppah!' Mama took quite an effort to convince me: 'Uncle Leib says he has never seen a Jewish wedding without a chuppah'. I was inexorable: "'Then let him leave!' Mama didn't tell him what I said, of course, but what was I to do?  All in all, there was no chuppah, but as for the rest of it, it was a beautiful Jewish wedding. There were more than 100 guests, and a good orchestra. The guests danced and had fun: we arranged the wedding party in the firefighters' office in Rybnitsa.

After the wedding we lived in Kishinev. We rented an apartment and paid for the whole year from the amount that we were given at the wedding. I got pregnant at once. I was 25 and being a doctor I knew this was about the time I had a baby. In winter I was already in the 6th month of pregnancy, I was having practical classes in the hospital in Rybnitsa. On 16 March in Rybnitsa my older daughter Ella was born.  After the training I returned to Kishinev with my baby. I passed my state exams and obtained a diploma of a children's doctor. My husband worked in Odessa in construction department. They were building the first 100T refrigerator in Kishinev. When the construction was over, he was offered to stay to supervise operation of this refrigerator since Moldavia didn't have any operations experts available. They promised him an apartment in Kishinev. I was offered a position of a doctor in a kindergarten. 

My husband did not receive an apartment right away either. We rented a room for 20 rubles per month, when his salary was - 90 rubles and we didn't have any other income. Life was hard, but we managed. When I went to work, I left Ella in a nursery school near where we lived.  We actually lived in the 'Red corner room' of the meat factory, the room was 28 square meters in area.  There was a stove to heat it, but the temperature never went above 14 degrees.  Ella was often ill. In 1964, when I was pregnant again, we received a one-room apartment with all comforts. In summer my second daughter Sopha was born. Two years later we received a big three-bedroom apartment in Zelinskogo Street. Ella went to a kindergarten, and Sopha was in a nursery school. I went to work as a district doctor in Skulianka in the suburb of Kishinev. I had my first pulmonary hemorrhage in 1967. Later these hemorrhages repeated. I went to the Institute of pulmonology in Moscow to consult them.  They didn't make the final diagnosis, but they ordered me to avoid exceeding cold or stress and take a mandatory rest in the south of the Crimea, when it's not too hot there  [the Crimean climate is favorable for people with lung problems]. I was 32 years old, I had two small children, and my goal in life was to live as long as 50. I begged the Lord to let me lie till I turned 50 for my children to have no stepmother. I had to take up a less tiring job: and I went to lecture at Kishinev Medical School.

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