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This is my sister Rosanna Shtein that perished during the war. Photo taken in Kiev around 1939.
My older sister Rosanna had finished a medical high school before the war and got a job at the Sanitation and Chemistry Scientific Research Institute. When the war began she was recruited to the army. On 5 July 41 she came home to say her good-byes. She was wearing a uniform, had the rank of first lieutenant and worked in the regional hospital.
Shortly after 4 o'clock on the next morning (6 July) I went to the hospital. I walked from Podol to Kreschatic - there was a traffic jam on the bridge and I had to climb over them. I finally reached the hospital. It was closed. There was only a sentry inside.
I hoped that she would hear and come to the gate. But then all of a sudden her closest friend Lisa Galperina came out. She told me that Rosanna wasn't there any more and that her unit had left an hour before. Rosanna was working under the leadership of professor Alekseyev. They were working for defense, looking for the methods to strengthen the immunity system to resist poisonous materials and they were following the front. So, I didn't see Rosanna.
After the war professor Alexeyev visited us in 1947. He was Rosanna's Director. He told us that they were encircled in the vicinity of Lubny and captured by the Germans. In 1942, in February, the Germans brought them to their German hospital in Darnitsa (an area in Kiev - left bank). Alexeyev managed to get an identity card for Rosanna that said that she was Georgian. She did look like a Georgian. That was all information he had about her.
My mother wrote 376 letters to various authorities, trying to find Rosanna and the only answer she ever got was "Her name is not on the lists of the lost, missing or those that died from the wounds". Rosanna perished.
