This is my husband Yuri Shabad. The picture was made in Moscow in 1960.
I was multi-field doctor. I had worked at the hospital for 23 years as a common surgeon with intermission during oncology courses. Having finished oncology courses, I became oncologist-surgeon. Once in February 1950, engineer Yuri Shabad came to our hospital to see a doctor. It was a fateful visit. Soon Yuri married me. Yuri was born in Minsk in 1913. He came of intelligentsia. His father was a professor and his mother graduated from a lyceum. There were a lot of bright scientists in the Shabad family: oncologist Ivan Shabad, Yuri's uncle, mathematician Shabad, economist Shabad, physician Shabad, who work with academician Sakharov. Yuri remained an orphan pretty early. His father died when he was 7 and his mother died when he turned 22. He had younger siblings: sister Evgenia and brother Isidor, who was the bread-winner because Yuri worked and studied in the evening institute. He became electric engineer. His sister became a gynecologist and his brother graduated from chemical department of Minsk institute. Before we met Yuri was married to a Russian woman Valentina Blokhina (after getting married she did not take his name) and their daughter Natalia Blokhina was born in 1941. She took her mother's name. In his sister's words they were having tiffs and finally they broke up. When the war was unleashed Yuri was confined to barracks at military plant. He worked there as a leading engineer. At the end of the war Yuri was sent to Germany, where he was supposed to taken part in repatriation of arms. My parents's bosom friend was a distant relative of Yuri Shabad. He asked me to examine her 9-year old daughter Natalia. Doctors suspected that she had rheumatic heart disease. I agreed. He took her to me and since that day we started seeing each other. He often met me after work. He suggested that we should go on vacation together. I refused because he was married and went to Sochi by myself Soon, I received a letter from him saying if I refused him he would feel wretched by the end of his days. He was very attractive and had the gift of a gab. My mother also liked him. Yuri proposed to me and I agreed to marry him. On the 5th of August 1950 we got married. We registered our marriage in a regional marriage registration office. In the evening we had a party with our relatives and friends. We could not even think of a traditional Jewish wedding back at that time. Both of us were communists, so it was impossible for us.
Both Yuri and I had neither money nor a lodging. We lived with our parents in a room of 10 sq. m. Yuri was also to pay alimony for his daughter. His salary was skimpy and my salary was not that big, but he had never heard a reproach from me regarding the lack of money. Father taught his children how to get by with what you've got. We had lived that way for 32 years. We got along with his daughter from the first marriage. Our daughter Sofia named after my deceased mother was born in 1951.
In 1976 the most terrible thing happened in my life: my daughter died. She was stricken with cancer, having taken her life very quickly, the way it usually happens with young people. My husband was taking it very hard. In 1982 he passed away. He, my daughter and my mother were buried on Jewish Vostryakovskoye cemetery in Moscow.
