Dobrina Rivkind with her sister Dora Verlinskaya

This is me to the left, and my sister Dora. I am 5 years old and my sister is 10. The photo was taken in Leningrad in 1937.

My parents got married and moved to Petrograd in 1925. Mother and father had known each other since childhood, they had lived in the same town of Vitebsk and had a big circle of common friends. Father was very witty and mother fell in love him. My parents were kind people. Mother was a strong-willed, self-disciplined and practical woman, she cooked very well. Father was a very talented person, he took great interest in his job, liked to play chess.  I remember that parents had a very good attitude to each other, they were always cheerful and loved each other very much. In 1927 my sister Dora was born. I was born in 1932. We lived from time to time in  Leningrad with our grandparents, and periodically in Kirovsk, in the North, where our father worked. But we were both born in Leningrad. My sister and I did not attend a kindergarten, mother and grandmother raised us. I remember how me and Dora played and scattered some sheets; sometimes we fought and she told me, "You are a table!" and I replied, "And you are a chair!", "You are a sofa!" But on the whole we were great friends. My grandparents lived moderately, helped to raise us and assisted me and my sister with our studies.

When the World War II started, we were evacuated to the Urals, the town of Solikamsk. All our family lived in one room: mother, father, me and sister.  We led a very poor and hungry life during the first year. I remember how we, children, were fed according to time schedule. We were hungry, standing under the clock, watching the clock hands moving, waiting for food. By the second year we started to plant potatoes, cabbages and some other vegetables, thus our life became a little more satisfied, so our second and third years in evacuation were better. In 1944, after the siege was lifted, our family returned home to Leningrad.