Tag #113775 - Interview #95602 (Alexandra (Shifra) Melenevskaya)

I finished school in Bashkiria as an excellent pupil and I got in the First Medical Institute without examinations. To tell the truth, at first I did not know, where to study. I wanted to enter the  Shipbuilding Institute. At that time the Shipbuilding Institute was situated near the Admiralty factory. I arrived there, but I lacked some necessary document, and I was told to come again the next day. I also visited the Architectural Institute, they told me to bring my drawings. The next day I went out to hand over documents to an Institute, but which one - I did not know. I was standing at the corner of Sadovaya Street and Nevsky Prospect and waiting for a tram to go to the Admiralty. And the tram was not coming for a long while. I decided to take the first tram I saw. And the first one to come was no. 3 – so I understood that I had to go to Petrogradskaya side where the Medical Institute was situated. My daddy wanted me to become a physician very much. So, I went to Petrogradskaya side and came to the Medical Institute. In 1944 all Institutes suffered from shortage of students, and the Medical Institute had already stopped receiving applications, so they accepted my documents only because I had finished school as an excellent pupil. "Well, if you have only excellent marks, you can pass in your documents" – they told me. So, I did it, came home and started crying: "Daddy, take away my documents, I do not want to study in the Medical Institute!".

But as it couldn't be helped, I went to the Institute. At that time it was difficult to get there: a lot of people everywhere, not enough transport. In order to reach Petrogradskaya side you had to find a place on footboard of a tram. And on my second day I arrived to the Institute having turned my ankle on my way. Again I sent my daddy to take away my documents, but he did not go. I missed a month of studies. And there, in the Institute, they chose me to be a monitor of the group in my absence. So I was a group monitor for five years, the girls were nice to me, so all in all I graduated from the Institute. When I finished the Institute, I had general speciality - at that time there were no particular specialities.