On this snapshot we are with my first wife Zoya and our daughter Alevtina. Alevtina is 5 years old here. We stayed in Borovichi at that time with my mother-in-law. I already worked in Kalinin and came to see my daughter.
I entered the 1styear of the institute, and on vacations visited my parents in Borovichi, where I got acquainted with a Russian girl Zoya Solomonova. It turned out that this girl had just finished the tenth form and tried to enter a medical institute, but failed to pass through in the contest and finally entered our institute, the faculty of building materials, so she appeared to be my fellow student. When my sisters disclosed to my parents, that I was courting her, and I was on a vacation to Borovichi, father told me, that I should tear off any relations with her, because I was a Jew, and she - a Russian, and it was against our national tradition. He even fell down on his knees before me, begging me almost with tears in his eyes. That scene touched me so much that I broke off with her. In summer in Borovichi I didn't communicate with her. In this time my parents became soviet people and stopped to keep traditions.
Then I came to Leningrad to proceed in my second year in the institute, and Zoya was in her first. Once I was walking along Nevsky Avenue. And she had a friend, Gurevich Masha, so I came across the two of them, it was in late autumn. They came up to me, involuntarily we started talking again, and as a result my infatuation for her continued. It was already in 1938. We were friends. My parents certainly did not know it. In 1940 it passed on to closer relations. We lived in a student's hostel.
On June 22, 1941, in the morning, we learnt that the war began. I had passed to the 5th year in the institute by then. We stayed in the Leningrad blockage, and I lived there half a year [from September 8, 1941 to February 1942]. Girls, who lived close, in the Leningrad region, went to their parents at once, and us, men, were sent to the Karelian Isthmus [territory in the north of Leningrad region won by the Soviet Union from Finland in 1939-1940] to dig up anti-tank ditches. I can't remember exact dates, but in the end of July there came a new decree [order] by Stalin, that students of the fifth year shouldn't be taken in the army, and those who were enlisted, had to be released and finish their institutes as soon as possible, to be later assigned jobs, because staffs were greatly reduced, - in the first months of the war many people were 'grinded' [in the first days of war more than 2 million. Soviet soldiers were lost].
