Vera Dreezo’s sister Zoya Zholdakova

 My sister Zoya Minevich, photographed on the beach during vacation. Odessa, 1954.

We were so happy to hear the word 'Victory!' in May 1945! We began to get prepared to go home from evacuation. We returned to our apartment. There was no furniture left. Varia, our nanny, watched where our furniture was gone and our mother demanded it back. Later my mother's brothers and sisters also received lodgings. Meyer stayed with us. I lived there until I got married.

In September 1945 my sister Zoya went to new Russian school #135. She was the best student at school and was to receive a golden medal after school, awarded to the best students  in the USSR. However, after finishing school in 1955 she received only a silver medal. Zoya had a classmate whose father was a Party official. There was limited number of gold and silver medal awards and that girl received a gold medal. This injustice was the first big shock in her life. She entered the Faculty of Sanitary Hygiene in Kiev Medical College. She was to take one entrance exams. She passed it successfully and finished her college successfully. She married Andrey Zholdakov, a Russian man. They have one son, Ilya. She went to work at the Institute of food hygiene where she defended her thesis and became candidate of sciences. She got a job offer in the Academic Institute named after Sysin  in Moscow and they decided to move to Moscow. My mother moved to Moscow with Zoya in 1965 and lived there until she died in 1980. She was buried at the town cemetery in Moscow. Zoya became director of a laboratory. She was scientific secretary of the All-Union department of Water Environment Safety. She defended her doctor's dissertation. She is still at the head of her laboratory and is one of 7 leading water ecologists in the world.