Tag #117258 - Interview #78030 (Margarita Kamiyenovskaya)

By the beginning of the 1930s my mother had gone to the USSR to visit her family. My grandfather had left Kiev for Moscow [today Russia], where his younger daughter lived. It was hard to get a visa to the USSR. Since my father was a very good doctor and often called to the Soviet embassy to render medical assistance, the ambassador issued my mother a visa as per my father's request. I don't remember everything my mother told me about her trip. What I remember is that the first thing upon my mother's arrival was my grandfather's warning that the janitor of their house was employed by the NKVD [17], so my mother had to watch her conversation. There was another amusing case. My mother was definitely dressed in a different way from the Soviet people, who were mostly dressed very poorly. Once on a warm day, my mother took off her coat and carried it in her hand and almost every passer-by asked if she was selling it.