Tag #145680 - Interview #78177 (Larisa Gorelova)

After the war all of my mother's sisters got together in Leningrad and lived a very friendly life. They were all united by blood, by their age, by their common childhood, by their views upon life, by business and common friends. They very often gathered in each other's houses for birthday celebrations, for secular holidays, sometimes without any reason. For some time one of the sisters even arranged family gatherings each Saturday at her place, so that everybody would see each other more often, not only on holidays. It was a joint lunch and everybody came with their families, just to communicate. The sisters went to the theater together, read the same books and the 'Novy Mir,' 'Znamya,' 'Druzhba narodov' magazines, popular periodicals at that time, exchanged them between themselves. They were interested in everything that happened around them. As they grew old, they even spent vacations together at their summer houses [36]. For me it was a real clan, where I felt calm and certain that if anything bad happened to me, I would be protected by them. The same applied to all other nephews and nieces.

I was always surrounded by friends and admirers, but my best friends were always my friends from the institute, with whom I still keep in touch; at the age of 60, they are all women of Jewish blood and we are all very close.