Dina Orlova with her parents and her brother

This is a picture of my family. From the left to right are I, my father, Mendel Roizen, my mother, Nehuma Roizen, and my brother, Oosher Roizen. The photo was taken in Chernovtsy in 1951 on the occasion of my graduation from the College of Records and Credit. I finished lower secondary school in Ozarintsy with honors and decided to go to Chernovtsy to enter the College of Records and Credits. In 1946 many Jews left Chernovtsy for Romania or Israel. Chernovtsy belonged to Romania before 1939 and after the war Soviet authorities allowed all those that wanted to leave to do so. This lasted for about half a year. Then the border was closed for almost 40 years. I was surprised that people who had prayed for Soviet troops to liberate them during the war were now running away from the Soviet country. They left their apartments, and officers who returned from the front received them. When my brother finished school in Ozarintsy, he went to Chernovtsy to enter the Construction College. My mother went to Chernovtsy with my brother. She managed to find a room in a communal apartment, where she stayed with him. We liked Chernovtsy. It was a nice old town that hadn't been destroyed during the war. People talked Yiddish in the streets. There was a big synagogue, a Jewish school and a Jewish theater in town. Before World War II the majority of the population was Jewish. There was still a significant number of Jewish inhabitants left after the war. My father couldn't find a job in Chernovtsy. He went to the vineyard in Yampol near Ivano-Frankovsk. He got a job as a forwarding agent for supplies of wine to stores in Chernovtsy. My brother finished Construction College and entered the Medical Institute in Chernovtsy. I finished college in 1951 and got a job assignment in Ivano-Frankovsk, a big town in Western Ukraine [300 km from Chernovtsy]. I was eager to study at the Medical Institute, but in order to do so I needed a certificate of higher secondary education. I had a diploma of the college, but it was a different branch and therefore not valid for the Medical Institute. I went to study in the evening secondary school and kept it a secret that I had a college diploma. If they had found out they wouldn't have allowed me to study there. I worked in a bank at daytime and went to school in the evening. After finishing this school I received a certificate of secondary education. Anti-Semitism got stronger after the Doctors' Plot in 1953.