Alexey Tsessarskiy

This is my son Alexey Tsessarskiy. The picture was made in 1959 in Moscow.

When the war was over my wife and I lived in the hostel. Here in 1947 our daughter Natalia was born. Wife worked in Moscow children's hospital and I was taking care of daughter while I was unwell. My wife came home at lunch to feed us. When I got well, I was invited to Moscow theatre named after Ermolova. I worked as a doctor and I was an actor part time. In 1947 I went to work for the system of Moscow health care.

My son Alexey Tsessarskiy was born in 1957. He graduated from MGU, Biology Department. He worked for the Biology Institute by the Academy of Science of USSR, then defended candidate's dissertation. Apart from his main job he is also a chief editor of the paper, dedicated to ichthyology. Alyosha has a son. His name is also Alexey Tsessarskiy. He is 23. He is working in cybernetics. My son divorced his first wife and married a woman who was also a biologist, but we still love his first wife. He has another son Pavel. He is in the 8th grade now.

My wife and I have lived a long, hard, but at the same time very interesting and friendly life. Our house was always open for relatives and friends, no matter where we lived. My parents, sister's family often came to see us. I liked sister's husband, an intelligent and interesting man. My friends- partisans and participants of the theatrical studio very often called on us.

I suddenly found out that there was new cooperative house constructed in the yard of our house. By that time our family had grown. Daughter was married and had a baby. I entered that building society. At that time I got the emoluments for my published book, so I could afford to have my apartment built.  My wife, son and I moved to that 3-room apartment, and our daughter remained in previous apartment in our yard.

At that time one of front-line fellow Lev Ermolin talked me into building a dacha [summer house] next to his place in Borodino[about 120 km to the west from Moscow]. At that time he was the director of the plant. They obtained the land plots for dacha in that district. He kept one land plot for me there. It was pretty far away from Moscow, but it was a spectacular place. I was hesitant, but when my second book was released and I got an emolument, my wife and I decided to build wooden house. Both of us did it with our hands. We are really pleased with that dacha. Almost every summer we spent there and children grew up there as well. Now my elder grandson is having a plush house built next to my dacha and I hope that my great grandchildren will be raised at my dacha.

I am not religious, I do not observe Jewish traditions and rites. I hardly know the language. I am not assisted by Jewish charitable organizations and I consider it to be humiliating for me.  My children were raised international. They identify themselves as Russians.