Vera Dreezo’s mother Ghita Minevich

My mother Ghita Minevich, photographed on her 75th birthday. Moscow, 1979.

My mother took over any job to support the family. She was selling things and got involved in illegal apartment exchange business. We were surviving. We were often hungry. Our mother received a pension for our father, but it was a miserable amount.  

My sister Zoya entered the Faculty of Sanitary Hygiene in Kiev Medical College. She was to take one entrance exams. She passed it successfully and finished her college successfully. She married Zheldakov, a Russian man. They have no children. She went to work at the Institute of food hygiene where she defended thesis and became candidate of sciences. She got a job offer in the Academic Institute named after Sysin  in Moscow and they decided to move to Moscow. My mother moved to Moscow with Zoya in 1965 and lived there until she died in 1980. She was buried at the town cemetery in Moscow.