Evgenia and Vladimir Galin

This is a picture of me and my husband Vladimir Galin. The photo was taken in Uzhhorod in 1952. We lived in our house after we returned to Zhytomir from evacuation in 1945. I began to look for a job. At first I got a job at a museum and then I went to work at school. I was a teacher at a primary school before I began to teach mathematics at a secondary school. There were many Jewish children at school. There was no anti-Semitism. I got married in 1953. My husband's mother was my mother's friend. My husband, Vladimir Galin, was born in Zhytomyr in 1929. His Jewish name was Volf. He didn't remember his father, Moisey Galin, who starved to death in 1933. Vladimir was the only child in the family. Vladimir's mother had no education. She was a seamstress at the garment factory. She was paid peanuts for her work, although she was an advanced employee. They were very poor. My mother-in-law was a strong healthy woman. She could have remarried, but she didn't want her son to be raised by a stepfather. During the Great Patriotic War they were in evacuation in a distant village in Siberia. Vladimir went to work as a cart driver in a kolkhoz at the age of twelve. After the war they returned to Zhytomyr. Vladimir finished a cinema school in Kiev, but he didn't like this profession. He went to the army and served in Uzhgorod [800 km from Kiev]. When his service term was over his officer offered him to continue on additional service. We met when Vladimir came to Zhytomyr on his first leave. When he left we corresponded and we got married when he came on the next leave. I was rather worried that I was four years older than he, but we lived in harmony. We had a civil ceremony in a registry office and in the evening we had a small wedding dinner. After the wedding I followed my husband to Uzhgorod.