This is a photo of me, Rita Razumovskaya (in center) my sister Galina Heifetz (first from right) and my daughter Olga Razumovskaya (first from left). It was taken in the 2000s in St. Petersburg in our apartment, where I live together with my daughter.
I have two sisters. One of them, Galina, is five years younger than me, she was born on 24th February 1927, and the second one, Irina, was born in 1938, when our mother was forty-two. I remember that I was studying in the tenth grade, and they called me out of lessons, because my sister Irina was born, and I wasn’t happy about it. When Galina was born, I asked my parents to take her away, to take her back. They named one of my sisters after some woman called Galina, whom my father liked, as a young man – maybe, he had some secret love story, I don’t know exactly – and why they named my second sister Irina, I have no idea. My sisters went to another school, which was situated on Volkhovskoy Road.
Compared to me, my sisters were married many times. Galina was married twice, and Irina is married for the third time now. Her first husband was Russian, and the second one was a Jew, a real Jew, a nationalist. And Galina’s second husband was a Jew too, and the first one was Russian. Galina became a Math teacher, and Irina is an engineer. Galina always had an idée fixe that she is better than all other people around, that she deserves a better life than she has, that everybody is an ungrateful pig and that when she was born, humanity got something gorgeous. Anyway, we don’t get on well; we can’t communicate in a normal way, we even can’t say ‘hello’ to each other, feeling friendly. Galina also is making up stories all the time; she is a person you can’t believe. Fortunately, my relations with Irina are much better; nevertheless we don’t see each other too often. Galina has two daughters – and grandchildren and great-grandchildren too, while Irina gave birth to two sons, who have their children too.
