Susanna Breido visits her cousin Tsylya

This picture was taken at my cousin Tsylya's place, daughter of father's brother, Grigory Breido.

She is a long-liver, she was born in 1914. I am wearing festive clothes because I came to celebrate the 60th anniversary of school #169, where I worked as a teacher of Russian and literature. I was not married, but it was not a sacrifice to my sick relatives.

A close friend of mine was murdered on May 5th, 1945 in Berlin. We agreed to meet on the first Saturday after the war in Leningrad at the corner of 5th Sovetskaya street and Grechesky, but the encounter did not happen… many girls of my generation did not get married as their real and potential fiances perished in the war.

Besides, I had a personal reason. I had bad heredity. The type of tuberculosis that I inherited from my father [which he inherited from his mother] was not hazardous and contagious for people around, but my children would have most probably inherited it.

My friend Yakov knew it and he was not afraid of it, but I could not take risk with anyone else.

At present I live alone and stay in almost all the time. I get a pretty decent pension [more than 3,000 rubles = $100. Average pension in Russia is no more than 40 USD], as a teacher with 37-year experience, war and blockade participant, so this money is enough for me to live on.

An employee from Sobes [social security agency] visits me, purchases food for me with my money. "HESED Avraham" offered assistance to me, but I refused, since I think that there are a lot of Jews in ward of HESED, who need help much more than I do.