Samuel and Nina Sukhenko

In 1944, the Military Liaison School moved to Kiev. Its deputy chief had a daughter, Nina, who later became my wife. I fell in love with her. The city was empty, and we met one another. She is 15 years younger than me. She was a Russian girl, a daughter of a military man. She had graduated from nine-classes school 9 in Kiev. 50-60% of children she was friends with were Jewish boys from her school. My Nina taught organization of industry at the Polytechnic Institute in Kiev. Every year, she was supposed to name two young people for the post-graduate course, and she always named Jews. Later she was summoned to the director, who told her, 'Listen, we need to raise our national cadres', to which she answered, 'Right, but they need to have heads on their shoulders too'. They could do nothing with her. When I got married, my mother said a wise thing, 'God has created all people alike'. And in her family I was considered a son. My Nina was a greater Jew than I was, and she worried a lot. The worst thing in our country was official anti-Semitism? In 1949, my daughter Olya was born. She studied at the same school her mother had studied at, and she graduated from it with honors. She graduated from an institute and was sent to one of the leading institutions, and now this institution is nothing.