Elena Oliker, nee Elena Matis

I was born in Leningrad, a Russian city on the banks of Neva River. It was founded by Peter the Great in 1703 as St. Petersburg, renamed by the Soviets, and after the Soviet Union fell apart in the 1990s, the old name was reinstated, but that happened long after I left the place with no desire to ever venture back even if for a short visit...

Families

My mother, Frima Gorinshtein, is from the Ukraine. She was the fifth child of six, the third daughter of Miriam Bykovsky and Abram Gorinshtein. Frima's two brothers, a set of twins, died in infancy. The older sisters had a very nice childhood---before the Russian Revolution, a big house with a garden, plentiful food, music lessons. Their father was in a habit of bringing gifts for his little girls from his frequent trips to Warsaw: nice fashionable clothes, shoes, toys. It all changed after the Revolution, the house was expropriated. Family's living quarters were reduced to one room. Unlike their older sisters, the younger girls didn't have many good childhood memories.

As a child in Ukraine, Frima witnessed pogroms. In Jitomir, the town where her family lived, pogroms happened before the Russian Revolution. They also happened after the revolution, during the two years of the Civil War, when different armed gangs, "the Whites," "the Greens," "the Reds," and many others, terrorized the civilians while fighting for power.

After WWII Frima married a young Moscovite, Grisha Matis, and moved with him to Moscow. The next move was to Leningrad (St. Petersburg). There I was born while my father was on an extended business trip to the U.S. I was named Elena, after Grisha's aunt who was killed by the Germans in Krasnodar. Aunt's given name was Hindy (Ginda), but her Russian name was Elena.

My father, Grisha (Gersh) Matis, comes from a family of Lithuanian Jews. He was the sixth and the youngest child of Menucha Adler and Wolf Matis. Menucha's mother was one of the founders of a Gymnasium for Jewish girls in Kovno, Lithuania. Both Menucha and Wolf were educated, cultured people who knew several languages. Most of their courtship letters were in German.

Grisha's oldest brother Isaac was twenty years his senior. Isaac was killed in WWII. Yohanan, the other brother, survived the WWII but died of TB shortly after. Grisha's three sisters lived in Moscow with their families. As a schoolgirl, I often spent my winter vacations in Moscow visiting my Aunts.

Two sisters of my mother, Anna and Liza, lived in Leningrad, and Vera (Devora) lived in Moscow.

My Mother, the Reader

Mother was a reader. She always loved to read, not just to read but to get lost in a book, to forget about her own world by immersing herself into the world of a book. As a girl, she often infuriated her sisters by merely ignoring household tasks and responsibilities without even noticing it, her nose in a book, her eyes on the page, her mind far away. Of course that had to change somewhat when as an adult, a wife and mother, and an engineer with a full time job and long commutes to work and back, she had lost that luxury of being able to ignore. But what she never ever lost was her love of reading. Especially with all new books appearing in translations, Thomas Mann and his brother Heinrich Mann, Somerset Maugham, Victor Hugo and Romain Rolland, Lion Feuchtwagner, Anatole France, Howard Fast. They were coming out of nowhere, bringing along multitudes of sounds, smells. tastes, images, and thoughts, yes thoughts. The omnipresent prefaces written by partyliners and emphasizing the pro-Communist, pro-Stalinist views of the published Western authors, were way too weak to curb this rushing turbulent flow, this hurricane of everything foreign. Of course, the choice of authors to be translated into Russian and published in the Soviet Union had been governed by the political preferences demonstrated by the writers. And yet, even a Communist writer from the West, even a clueless Soviet Sympathizer, was still writing about things Western, things unimaginable, things that had been securely hidden from the Soviet populace as if they didn't even exist. After all, these strange Communists ate asparagus and camembert and smocked cigars and gazed at avant-garde paintings and listened to Jazz and walked by a Le Corbusier building in the morning.

Dad liked to read too, but even more than reading he loved hunting books down and delivering his bounty to his wife. And hunting books down was an almost heroic effort. In bookstores people could be seen physically assaulting each other when trying to secure a copy of a desired book that happened to arrive to the store and become available for sale to general public, which would happen only after an assigned number of copies had already been separated and carefully cached away for those more equal than the rest. Shopping for books could be a dangerous adventure, a hunting expedition, a military manoeuvre, a cunning campaign.

Dad had his own plan and that plan worked very well. Dad managed to acquire a great number of coveted books without a scratch or a bruise. His strategy was brilliant, his tactics were impeccable. Dad charmed booksellers in distant towns where he often traveled on business. In distant towns the number of readers was fewer, but in the country of equal opportunities distribution of publications was proportional to population counts. Therefore, in distant towns demand was lagging behind supply unlike the central cities where much larger numbers of educated people created demands crucially exceeding supplies.

With books arriving at home when Dad was returning from yet another trip, and books arriving by mail from the charmed booksellers who followed up on their promises to Dad, and books borrowed from friends, neighbors,or coworkers, Mom absolutely had to have the time to read, and so she was in a constant search for reading minutes, bringing a book home in the evening and taking a book with her in the morning.

Unlike her fellow citizen, she always managed to read on a trolley on the way to work. She had devised a winning plan of action and followed it day after day for many years, the scheme that generously allowed for her morning reading.

Buses and trolleys were always overcrowded, leaving little hope for a seat on an hour long ride to work. And public transportation was the only transportation. The trolleys stopped right by our house. Trolley #15 going North would take Mom pretty close to the Institute where she worked. The trolley going in the opposite direction was heading toward the terminal station and would arrive there after merely six stops. That terminal station was located by a huge administrative building in the middle of nowhere. The giant of a building was initially designed to house the apparatchiks and their offices and had the biggest assembly hall ever. It was constructed before the World War II according to hefty plans to develop the South Side into a new and improved center of the city, a work-hard-and-live-well area for the party officials of one kind or another. During the war much of what already was built got bombed and damaged. Some of it was restored after the war, but the plan to create the new downtown, bigger and better than whatever the Tzars had created, that ambitious plan was abandoned. And the administrative mammoth became a home to a large number of engineering organizations working for the Defense, or I should say, the Offense. The monumental imposing structure with tall semi-columns and a frieze running high along the facade facing East, had the ubiquitous Lenin in front. Lenin was pointing forward as he always did; in this case forward was to the East. Considering absence of anything around, Lenin was pointing nowhere. Still it was understood that he was pointing toward the Communist future, even if the Communist future looked incredibly bare.

And so Mother would get on that trolley, the one going away from her destination and toward the gigantic landmark. Mother would get on that trolley and travel in the wrong direction. Once at the terminal, she would secure a seat by the window in the now empty trolley. She would sit down and open her book and read, and some time later the trolley would start its journey up North. It would pick up people on the six stops before arriving at our stop fully packed. Sometimes Mom would raise her eyes from her book and take a note of a few of her neighbors left behind as they couldn't squeeze themselves into the jammed car. All and all her tactics added about twenty five minutes to her commute, but afforded her more than an hour of reading. It surely was worth it.

My father, the Bomb Maker

During the WWII my father worked on some war-related projects in a town by the Ural Mountains that run between Europe and Asia. He first met Mom there, but they got married after the war.

For two years after the WWII my father worked for the Government Purchasing Commission of the Soviet Union in the United States. (The main reason I know about the Purchasing Commission is that I have Dad's American business card.) When he returned to Russia, his work required being away from home for long periods of time. Dad was awarded the Stalin Prize (which was the Soviet Union's highest civilian honor) in the end of 1949, a few months after the successful test of the Russian Atomic Bomb. Father was an talented engineer, and his work on the Atomic bomb was probably related to design of electrical supply systems for either reactors or the bomb itself, or both.

Along with that Stalin prize, he was given several substantial perks, such as free travel at any time by sea, land, and air for himself and his family. I vaguely remember a Black Sea cruise, the liner "Rossia" with a swimming pool on the top deck. Also remember our vacation trips to resorts on Black Sea and Baltic Sea. I guess, mostly I remember the photographs taken on those trips.

Among the perks was a document that entitled Dad's children, (including and limited to me. his daughter,) to an enrollment in any school of higher learning upon simply passing the entrance exams and regardless of competition. (I was a little girl then) That document was shown to me much later. All that became invalid in the beginning of the 60s, as I was told. Father died in 1957, of a heart attack. I am his only child, and I was young when he died. Mother never talked to me about Dad's work, so I do not really know much about it. Father was a technology lover, he never joined the Communist Party, but seemed to be a loyal citizen. His English was very good albeit heavily accented.

Early Schooling

The First of September was the day when kids started the school year. In the morning they emerged from their homes, clean faces, briefcase- shaped book bags filled with textbooks and notebooks, little boys' heads shaved except for little bangs over the forehead. Each boy was dressed in gray pants and soldier-like tunic with a belt. Little girls wore brown dresses, white aprons over the dresses, white ribbons in the hair. Both boys and girls had white collars stitched on the uniforms. The collars were ripped off every week to be washed, starched, and ironed, then stitched back on. Some masochistic parents expanded the ritual of collars to include white cuffs. When I was in the first grade I envied the girls with cuffs, but that envy was short lived because my mother taught me to take care of my white collars early in my school career, and collars were more than enough of a headache without cuffs. After the First of September children looked less clean, but still wore uniforms, except girls' black aprons replaced the while ones.

In third grade the classes were reshuffled and Maria Konstantinovna, or Maria, as we called her behind her back, carefully selected kids for her own class. Since she was a headmistress in charge of grades one through four, she certainly was in a position to handpick a good bunch, which she did. With that class she had no discipline problems. Most of the parents wanted their offsprings to learn, and most of the kids were indeed capable of learning.

Maria was in her forties, a spinster with pockmarks on her face. She always wore a navy blue skirt, a freshly laundered and ironed white blouse and a bright green cardigan. A fearsome woman, she terrified us, her demands knew no end, but she did make us learn. It is because of her not so gentle teaching methods I still make no mistakes when I have to write in Russian. I still spell correctly, use punctuation with no errors, and still remember the rules of Russian Grammar.

Another important and most unusual thing about Maria was that she never made any distinction between the Jewish and Russian kids. (I mean ethnic Russian) The split between us was about fifty-fifty, and, thanks to the nine year life experience in his or her possession, each of us was acutely aware of who was and who wasn't Jewish.

My math teacher, the best teacher I've ever had, Iosif Grigorievich Rutman, was about thirty years older than the kids in my class. He started teaching us in fifth grade, tall and slim man with a thin serious face, and a twinkle in the eyes. A male teacher was by itself a good reason for some excitement, and in my school we also got a History teacher and an English teacher of male gender. My school was definitely unlike other schools where mostly women taught. Well, in my school women-teachers were still a majority, however, men-teachers were not limited to P.E. And in my fifth grade, we had four male teachers (that's including Victor Nilich, the formidable P.E. teacher) and two female teachers. Iosif Rutman was the best. He was tough, demanding and very likable.

I vividly remember his daily Mental Math routine when we feel strangely excited, a pen and a sheet of paper with the name in the upper right corner on the desk, our elbows planted squarely on the desks, our arms folded, all eyes gazing at the blackboard where ten computational problems are all written down in ten lines, and securely covered by a large white sheet of paper. We are waiting for Rutman's announcement:
   "Mental Math!" upon which he marches up to the blackboard, his back to us, his arms in the air, his hands moving the white paper precisely one line down, so that the first problem becomes visible. Then he walks to the side of the classroom, leans against the wall and stands motionless, his arms folded in front of his chest, his head tilted back and resting against the wall, his Adam's apple prominent under his sharp chin, his eyes, although half-closed, busy scanning the room, observing our effort.

We read the problem, our brains hard at work, this exhilarating computing work. The room is very quiet. After a little time passes, Rutman opens his eyes and asks sharply,
   "Who's got it?" Several hands fly up.
   "Who is not done yet?" the second question is shot at us. A few hands reluctantly go up. Rutman lets a few more moments pass, then closes his eyes, stamps the floor with the heel of his right foot and utters the command,
   "Write it down!' We grab the pens, write down the answer on the first line, drop the pens onto the desk, put our elbows back onto the desk, our arms folded, and lift our eyes to stare at the blackboard where Rutman's hands are lowing the white paper one line down.

Ten times we go through this routine, it is nothing like a routine for us, it is our sacred Mental Math. What was Iosif Rutman's secret? Why most of the kids ended up majoring in math, engineering, or science?

Toilet Paper

I was little, when my Aunt Anna stitched together two squares of fabric into a big pocket and hung it on two nails in the wall to the right of the commode. The commode singularly occupied the tiny closet-like space which you wouldn't call a bathroom as no bath could be found there, nor would you call it a washroom due to the obvious absence of the sink and facet combination. Such single purpose room for a commode was not necessarily a Soviet invention. Actually, it is a common feature in apartments in Europe, and it does have a name. The French refer to it as La Toilette, and the British call it a water closet, or a WC for short. So a WC is a bathroom without a bath or a sink, and that was what we had in our apartment in Leningrad when I was a little girl.

Anyway, it became my responsibility to feed the big pocket that Aunt Anna had sewn. The big pocket had to be filled with paper for everybody's use after performance of the poop action. I had to cut up the newspaper into rectangularly shaped pieces about one sixteenths of a newspaper page size and put them into the big pocket. Why this size? The WC doubled as a reading place, that's why. And I was no censor, I treated all newspapers the same, cutting them into similarly sized and shaped pieces. Anyway, I had to see to it that the big pocket was never empty. It was my responsibility, you see.

Now the newspaper was always available, since every employed individual was obligated to subscribe to Pravda (The Truth). Other newspapers were optional, but not Pravda. If there were two employed individuals in the same family there often would be two obligatory subscriptions to Pravda, unless one of these two comrades had managed to present all necessary convincing documents at his or her place of work. The documents were to prove that there already was one valid subscription to Pravda in the family,

In our apartment we had two subscriptions to Pravda, one from Uncle Yacov's place of work, another - from Dad's. None from Mom's because she managed to present convincing documents certifying her marriage to Dad, and his active subscription to Pravda. None for Aunt Anna either. Because she was a homemaker and didn't have a place of employment other than slaving in the apartment or standing in lines while immersed in the urban fishing, hunting, and farming experience, the Soviet style. Although there weren't many homemakers around. Those who happened to be ones, would venture out every day and join the retired individuals forming long lines in the stores or by various outside kiosks in order to buy food.

Anyway, we did have two subscriptions to Pravda in our apartment, and these two identical papers arrived every morning after all employed adults had already left for work. In the late afternoon, the optional paper, called Leningrad in the Evening, arrived, and this was the only paper that was ever unfolded by anybody other than me. That's right, unfolding the two sets of Pravda was my very own occupation, unfolding and cutting into pieces to feed the big pocket in the WC.

Leningrad in the Evening ended up in the same pocket but not straight from the mailbox. Actually, the Leningrad in the Evening pieces were considered superior even in the WC - they were read, or reread by the occupants of the apartment while they were alone behind the closed door of the WC.

Sometimes in other people's Waterclosets I saw a publication that was practically designed for use as a toilet paper. It was Agitator's Notebook, a weekly magazine filled with brief arguments and slogans recommended for use in speeches and conversations with the populace. It looked as a five by eight pad of writing paper, although it might have been smaller in size. It had a soft cover over a good number of newsprint paper pages with text on both sides. The format and size of this publication was just right for the WC pocket; it could be used as is, and would, in fact, encourage a self service since the WC users would simply tear pages off when needed. So I asked my parents to subscribe to Agitator's Notebook. All three of us were in the room, reading, when I lifted my eyes from the book, and voiced my request. Mother didn't respond. Mom had a life long habit of foremost concentration when she was with a book. When Mom was reading, she was practically detached from the world around her. That day she was finishing All Quiet on the Western Front. All we had heard from her lately was Erich Maria Remarque this and Erich Maria Remarque that. When I requested a subscription to Agitator's Notebook Mom didn't flinch. Totally absorbed in the book, she simply was not aware of her surroundings. But Dad heard me. He raised his eyes from the page he was on and stared at me in astonishment for a few moments. "And why would you like to have a subscription to Agitator's Notebook," he finally asked. I explained. And he said, "Not a good idea, darling." And that was that.

Years later when I was an adult with my own little family, the toilet paper, although not totally nonexistent, still was available very rarely. The big pocket continued to serve its purpose for the duration of my stay in Russia.

I Am A Capitalist

That six-storey house where we lived was well built. It was originally designed for Communist leaders but now was filled up with mere populace, several unrelated families sharing a communal kitchen and a bathroom. Still those were spacious apartments in U shaped buildings that formed internal green plazas, with a sandbox or two, much in use by kids and stray cats alike, and an occasional, usually dry, fountain with faulty plumbing. The openings between the buildings featured tall and almost handsome grillwork.

In our apartment we were lucky to have blood related families rather than total strangers. It was a four room flat, three rooms were rather large, about twelve feet by fifteen, and a little room, by the kitchen, originally intended for a live-in maid. Each apparatchik's family apparently was entitled to a serf. My grandmother lived in the little room. My aunt Anna, Mom's sister, and her husband Yakov occupied the middle big room. Their two sons lived in the second big room, and my mom, my dad and I had the third big room. We all shared a small kitchen, a hallway and a bathroom with a tiny separate WC room.

Laundry was done in the bathroom by hand. On a laundry day five strong strings ran from one end of our sizable hallway to the other and held washed sheets, and pillowcases, and duvets, and the whole appearance of the hallway was surreal. When paid laundry became available, each article of bedding got a label with an assigned number sewn on, and sheets, and towels, and pillowcases, and duvets were carried to the laundry place and, after a customary standing in line for a while, the stuff was left there in exchange for a receipt. This practice was wide spread and waiting in lines to drop off the laundry or to pick up the washed and ironed (somewhat) bedding was totally worth it. Later, in the seventies, an electric washing machine was purchased but that device was used rarely, so inefficient and logistically cumbersome it was.

Friday was our cleaning day. Aunt Anna would start in the morning, and by the time I arrived from school, my work had been waiting for me. Once I turned eight, I had to wash the linoleum floor in the kitchen, and the stone floors of the bathroom and the WC. Aunt Anna would have already cleaned the gas range, and the sink, and wiped the kitchen table and chairs. It never ever occurred to anyone that my cousins, the two boys, eight and four years older than I, had none of responsibilities of that kind. Of course, that was the way boys were being brought up. But also Aunt Anna was a homemaker, and as such. she was shouldering much of the housekeeping tasks whereas my mother worked outside the home, and with an over an hour commute each way, she simply wasn't around much. So once I was old enough, I became a little domestic representing our small family.

When I was very little, we used to have shelves for pots and pans, and plates and cups, and canisters with salt and sugar, but later a new wide cabinet with a hutch was purchased and it hold all of that, and even had drawers for flatware and cutlery. The top and bottom laminated doors were windowless and, therefore, securely hid our kitchen possessions from curious eyes of visitors.

The kitchen window had two sets of frames and panes, and cotton wool was spread out in the wide area between the inner and outer frames. That cotton wool, originally white, had a yellowish tint and all the dust collected there over fall and winter gave it an unattractive motley appearance. Jars and bottles lined up the wide windowsill.

Heavy short doors under the window covered a cold chamber, a built-in wall compartment with two shelves and a round hole in the outer wall. Because of that hole, in the winter, the chamber under the window was, in fact, a natural refrigerator. An ever present thick wooden cylinder wrapped in a rug was made to fit that hole snugly. That unattractive contraption would be used sometimes to prevent everything from freezing over on the nights, (and days, for that matter,) when it was way too cold outside. The real, technologically correct, fridge appeared much later, it was bulky, rounded at the edges, white, with a chrome door handle. It didn't fit into the kitchen and, therefore, stood in the hallway.

A little metal square door with a handle in one of the kitchen walls was a garbage chute, an extremely convenient feature. Except for the times when either somebody threw in something that spilled and started stinking, or when the whole pipeline was clogged. The latter usually turned into a long stinking event that was totally out of tenants' control.

Although it certainly wasn't a big kitchen, but its floor still required regular cleaning. The stone floors of the bathroom and the WC were much easier, because Aunt Anna wiped them regularly between Friday's washings. The biggest floor job of all was the hallway.

The floor in the hallway was hardwood, and I was expected to wax and buff it to make it glow, and I did that every Friday. A large soft brush attached to my foot was the buffing device; I would stick my foot under the leather band fastened to the top of the brush, and slide all over the hallway pushing with my other foot. Years later an electric buffer was bought, the upright-vacuum-cleaner-looking-machine with a cord to plug into an electric outlet. But the electric buffer still couldn't get sufficiently close to the walls or into the corners, so the wide soft brush had never retired.

Once I decided to take care of the hallway floor on Thursday. Without conferring with Aunt Anna, because I thought the idea excellent, I did exactly that the first thing when I came home from school, and the floor looked great.

Except Thursday was the day when we had hot water. We only had hot water once a week, since the boiler had a capacity to serve about one sixth of the building and our one sixth of the building was taking bath on Thursday. And so all dwellers of the apartment took bath on Thursday. That meant two families with a total of three kids, and the Grandmother. In addition, the family of Aunt Liza, Mom's younger sister, always arrived on Thursday, early in the evening, since their apartment never had hot water. Aunt Liza's two daughters had long braids, and Aunt Liza's hair was rather long too. And the women in Aunt Liza's family liked to stand in front of the mirror in the hallway and comb their wet hair untangling it patiently while dripping water on the floor. That particular Thursday they were dripping water onto my glowing floor that had just received its weekly buffing, and then had to receive another waxing and buffing the very next day.

This is how it was in spacious apartments of the well designed buildings. What was built around these nice apartment buildings after the war looked quite differently. Behind the complex where we lived, several dull looking houses were dorms. Not dorms for university students, but dorms for general public. On each floor ran a dreary long narrow corridor with discolored walls punctuated by many doors. Occasional light bulbs gave out some miserable light. Each door led into a room for a family to live in. The corridors ran for the length of the building and connected a big communal kitchen on one side to a few toilets on the other. Several kids in my class lived in these dorms.

Once I was helping a girl from the dorm with a math problem during a recess and since we weren't done, I suggested to continue in my home after school. The girl gave me a funny look but nodded. And so after school we walked together, and all was well while we left the school and walked all the way to our building, and through the gates, and through the entrance, and up the stairs to the third floor. Actually, the walk was pretty much the same as always, since her dorm was right behind our apartments, and that was the way she walked home. The stairway to my apartment also was fine, since the steps were dirty, it was dark, smelt of cats and urine, and the elevator didn't work. Finally we arrived at the door. I rang the door bell, and my aunt let us in. Once inside, the girl looked around the hallway and followed me into the room that my mom, my dad and I shared. She entered our room, took a careful look around, and told me forcefully that I was a capitalist and she wanted nothing from me. Then she walked out. She had stayed away from me ever since. With my mouth open I started turning my head this way and that, trying to see my home the way other people would.

I saw a big room filled with furniture: my parent's bed, a couch that turned into my bed every evening and returned to its couch personality every morning. I saw a nice large bookcase filled with books and topped with mom's collection of porcelain figurines. I saw my upright piano, old, shiny black, with carved surfaces and occasional scratches. An oval dining table with six chairs, all of dark polished wood, a pretty embroidered runner on the table. The wardrobe with a mirror. A buffet filled with good plates and cups that were used for special occasions only. Actually, the wardrobe and the buffet clashed the big way, the former of dark polished walnut, the latter of light wood of some kind, but that was of little concern to me. That room was filled with prosperity, I decided, and I should be ashamed of myself, enjoying such an inappropriate room as my home. I was eight years old.

It mattered little that my friends homes were more or less like mine. My friends lived in communal apartments with educated parents who tried their best to create a nice place to call home. Very small, rather shabby, but filled with books and a few nicer things. Most of my friends were Jewish. I also was friends with a few ethnic Russian girls. Those mostly were good relationships but not without occasional mild anti-Semitic remarks. The dorm girl however, would never even consider being my friend. The dorm girl disliked me. Strongly. Because I was a "capitalist" with nice things, and also because I was Jewish.

Actually, I was thinking, my woolen brown uniform dress and my first white apron, made of silk, were also symbols of status, a "capitalist's manifesto" of sorts. It didn't matter that, like all other girls around, I owned exactly one brown dress at a time, worn every single day, and cleaned superficially. After about six month into my first uniform, my dad showed to my mom the threadbare behind of my dress skirt. He held the skirt against the light of the chandelier that hung over our oval dinner table, and the two of them thoughtfully investigated the thinning fabric. I guess I wasn't exactly sitting still on the wooden bench during classes. I wasn't blamed, my parents joked about Dad's discovery, but a few days later Mom spent the whole evening separating the skirt at the waist line, turning it one hundred and eighty degrees and stitching it back to the dress top, so that the threadbare area would be hidden securely under the apron.

Still a woolen dress meant that we were well to do, capitalists, so to speak. The kids from the dorms wore cotton uniforms of faded colors. Even brand new cotton dresses had a funny brown color, as if they had spent plenty of time under the blazing sun, which actually would be quite an exotic suggestion as such sun never visited our Northern city.

A few weeks after my realization that I was indeed a capitalist, my parents came home from their two day trip to the city of Tallinn. Tallinn was the capital of Estonia, one of the three Baltic Republics. Those Baltic republics, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, had enjoyed normal life for much longer that Russia. These three independent countries found themselves under the Soviet spheres of influence as a result of the anti-aggression pact between Stalin and Hitler, in 1939. They were formally annexed into the Soviet Union shortly after. But because of their pre-WWII normal life, the three Baltic republics preserved some aura of the West, and life there was the closest to the imagined Western life a Soviet citizen could possibly muster.

And so my parents went to visit that illusion of the Western life in Estonia, and then they came home with a gift for me. A new winter coat.

How I wished they never went to Tallinn, or if they did they never came across that coat. It was pink, well, not really pink, the color was rose. It had a brown stand-up fur collar, and brown fur cuffs, and a brown fur hem border. And as if that wasn't enough, the sleeves were ornamented with rich brown embroidery. I had never seen anything more embarrassing in my life. I was mortified. It was Sunday, and my friend Natasha came with her mother to pick me up. We were going to a concert for children at the Conservatory of Music. My mother told me to put on my new coat. I said I never would. My mother said that in that case I was not going to the concert. I was crying hysterically. My father was conveniently absent. He had a tendency to disappear whenever Mom and I were in disagreement. When Mother confronted him once, he explained that his goal was to never spoil his relationship with me. So here we were in a disagreement, and Father wasn't there.

I missed the concert, I cried my eyes out, but the next morning I was sent to school in the new winter coat. Much to my surprise, the woolen uniforms approved my parents' choice, but the cotton uniforms did give me a few accusing looks. The boys said something, but when you are eight, you do not really care what the boys have to say. And I wore that coat two winters in a row. It was lovely, light and warm, and very different. And I never stopped to perceive as a huge problem the very fact that it was different... When finally I grew out of it, and my cousin, Aunt Liza's daughter, got the coat, I didn't say a word. Mom bought me a standard dark new coat, heavy and unremarkable, and wearing it was absolutely uneventful.

Matzos for Passover

Grandma's sister Liza (Lea), short and stout, with a heavy body and short legs, looked like a shoebox with rounded edges, if you close it and make it stand up on one of the two smallest side. The proportions were those suitable for a pair of kids' size sneakers. Now imagine sturdy thick ankles and little wide feet below, a round head with straight black hair gathered severely into a tiny bun on the back above the box, arms and hands on the sides.

Old Aunt Liza seemed to always be the same age. Her hair was always black, her teeth even and healthy, although of a yellowish hue, big ears were readily visible thanks to her never changing hairdo. Liza's few clothes always looked boring and dark. She was a seamstress and lived by herself in a very small room in a very big apartment. The mansarda window overlooked an old quiet Petersburg's street and was a home to many pigeons with their heavy bodies and short legs which were in a habit of crowding on the other side of the glass. The pigeons looked a bit like Aunt Liza, more rounded though.

Long ago, however, things were different. Liza was young then. The youngest of all sisters, she had never married, and when both middle sisters, Gitl and Fraydl, right after the Russian Revolution, left for America with their young families, all that Liza had still had was her oldest sister Miriam (my grandmother) and Miriam's family. Neither Gitl nor Fraydl forgot their youngest sister. They were sending her packages from America, with food and clothes, and Liza enjoyed their gifts very much. While it was still acceptable to have relatives abroad, that is. Those were the times when Liza's clothes were nice and bright. But when having foreign sisters became dangerous, both Gitl and Fraydl were advised to disappear into oblivion, and from that time on Liza only had one sister Miriam. And so Old Aunt Liza was often present in our apartment.

I also had an old Aunt Minna Pepper who appeared very frequently for a day visit. She was not a relative. She happened to grow up in the same Ukrainian town Jitomir where my mother was born. Aunt Minna had a grown son who was married and lived in the North while Aunt Minna lived alone and often felt that need for a family, and so she was making her long trips on a street car to visit our apartment every now and then. Aunt Minna was the one who delivered Matzos before Pesach.

Matzos were baked in the basement of the grand synagogue. It was the only synagogue in the city, except for the little chapel at the Jewish cemetery. Stopping by at the synagogue to buy Matzos was not something you would do if you had a job and would like to hold on to it. Grandmother never traveled far by herself. She would take short walks to the neighborhood shops, but that was the extend of her travel. So no adult in our family could go to pick up the Matzos. Old Aunt Minna and Old Aunt Liza had the luxury of being rather low on the social ladder, so they could safely go. And they did. Old Aunt Liza one year, Old Aunt Minna most years. I saw once Aunt Minna giving my Aunt Anna (mother's sister) matzos wrapped in the newspaper, and Aunt Anna giving Aunt Minna a sack of flour. I thought it was funny. What was Aunt Minna going to do with the flour? Well, to get Matzos at the synagogue, you had to bring two things: money to pay, and a kilo of flour. Aunt Minna gave them her own flour for our Matzos. So now Aunt Anna was giving her back what our family owed her. I was impressed that Aunt Minna had thought up a way to save herself a long and tiring trip to get our flour before she went to get our Matzos.

Different dishes were cooked at Passover time. Soup with kneidlach was served, matzah brei replaced omelette. Our neighbor Aunt Polina brought over some of her famous Tayglach. Aunt Anna made her famous Gefilte fish. Although Gefilte fish was not for the matzo times only. It was even made for the anniversary of the Russian Revolution (which coincided with Aunt Anna's Birthday, and also for the May Day. Making Gefilte Fish was a huge masterful production by my Aunt Anna. She would use a pike or carp, separate the skin from the flesh. She would prepare a mixture of chopped fish, onions, bread or matzo meal (depending on the holiday). She would keep the backbone and the skins and stuff the mixture back between the skin of the fish and the backbone, and boil it with carrots, beets, onions, pepper...

We had Passover Matzot, but we never had a Seder, at least I do not remember one. My first real Seder was at the home of parents of my future husband. I was introduced to his family on the night of the first Seder. But that was much later.

High School Lit

The new teacher of Russian Literature, a small and delicate creature, appeared in the doorway followed by the principal whose overwhelming proportions reached the level of grotesque in comparison. We got up and stood by our desks quietly as it was expected of us. The principal's low throaty voice introduced her as Lily Aleksevna, and his huge frame walked out, Now she stood alone in front of twenty seven boys and girls, some of whom were rather tall and big. She told us to sit down and we did. She said that she would teach us Literature. She said that each lesson would start with reciting poetry, even before taking a roll call. She asked the boy who set right in front of her who his favorite poet was, and he said Robert Burns. We only studied Russian literature at school, but he wasn't trying to be cute, he did like Robert Burns, that was Burns translated into Russian, to be exact.

Nonchalantly Lily Aleksevna proceeded to recite Burns for him and for the rest of us. When she finished "O' whistle an'I'll come to ye, my lad!" we applauded, and that was how she won our class.

Her voice was melodious and so was her name. Lily Aleksevna. Alliteration. We learned about alliterations the year before. Actually, we liked her alliteration enough to spare her of renaming, she remained Lily Aleksevna, and not Lil, or Lilith, or Midget, or some such thing that we usually were agreeing upon between us, quickly but firmly.

Small built Lily Aleksevna with her slender neck, thin wrists and ankles, arched eyebrows and musical voice, fragile and noticeably vulnerable, carried a heavy load of teaching us with elegance. We went along with her demands, day after day, week after week, poetry and compositions, required reading and essays, lectures and discussions. And more.

When my friend Dina and I willingly spent many evenings preparing the first program for the school radio, it was because Lily Aleksevna had mentioned a possibility of running a radio program. And so we jumped on it and worked diligently on a story about a Russian composer Piotr Tchaikovsky. And we goofed only once. As we were researching the matter we seemed to be unable to come across any mentioning of the cause of Tchaikovsky's death. So we lost patience and hurriedly invented a life long ailment in order to finish both his life and our tale. Lily Aleksevna just let it be, with no comment whatsoever. Neither did she object to our extra long and quite intentional pause after mentioning "Moguchaya Kuchka" - a group of composers whose goals were to develop Russian music and to cultivate the tastes of listeners. We paused in order to allow our own tasteless listeners to laugh it out, since the name "Moguchaya Kuchka" means "a mighty pile." Actually, following this presentation, Lily Aleksevna mischievously announced that our new radio program was worthy the famous name, and it was officially named "A Mighty Pile" --- to our delight.

With all due respect to a good teacher, when the teacher doesn't show up one day, you celebrate the free period. And we did. It was Monday in the beginning of December. Lily Aleksevna didn't show up and we couldn't be happier. The next day we didn't have Literature either. And it was just fine with us. However by the end of the day the rumors spread that Lily Aleksevna died. Not only that, the rumors persisted, she had taken her own life. She hung herself. The funeral will be this coming Thursday at noon. We were stupefied. We were flabbergasted. We were dumbfounded. We still attended classes, sort of. We still went home after the last period and still appeared at school the following morning. The principal walked in and told us that Lily Aleksevna died. The new teacher would start this coming Monday. We were silent. By the seventh grade you know not to ask questions. The principal stood looking at us for a few moments and then told us that no one was allowed go to the funeral. Although we all knew not to ask questions, Dina yelled out, "Why?" "You are not allowed to cut classes," the principal said and left the room.

Cowardly, I was relieved that we were forbidden to go. Having experienced the sudden death of my father, I was scared of funerals and cemeteries. I had been terrified by Mother's persistent requests to accompany her to my dad's grave which she visited every Sunday all these years. First I was a little girl and I was scared, so I cried, and she would leave me behind, and I would feel relieved and very guilty. Then I was older, and still scared, but I didn't cry anymore, I had tons of homework, urgent assignments, my stomach hurt, my head was killing me, whatever would get me off the hook. So that Wednesday morning I sat at my desk and didn't move.

But Dina was adamant about going to the funeral. And she went, along with two equally determined boys, all three of them Jewish kids going to the Russian cemetery. I had not heard from Dina that night.

She came to school the following day and stoically ignored questions and comments. After school we sat on the old couch in her home, hugging each other and crying, and Dina told me how the casket was lowered into the hole in the ground, and the earth filled that grave up, and then "they put a big wooden cross on the new grave". That was something we had only seen in the movies. Nobody was putting crosses on the graves nowadays. We lived in the state of Victorious Atheism. We looked at each other through tears and cried more. Then we heard loud steps and voices in the hallway, Dina's parents and her little sister returned with groceries. We wiped our tears and I went home.

Monday morning Megaera arrived. She walked in followed by the principal, and they matched each other in their enormous presence. Everything about her was an overkill, her nose long and thin, with prominently exposed nostrils, hung over thin lips of a big mouth. Corners of her mouth were curving down. Her eyes, dark and penetrating, gazed at us through large glasses. Her graying hair was braided, the braids laying high above her pale forehead with deep horizontal wrinkles. She was a tall and stout woman and we hated her for her looks. Her name was Evgenia Alexandrovna, the principle said. When he left she opened the class journal and before calling the first name on the roster, said with a smirk, "As you've heard, my name is Evgenia Alexandrovna, I have no doubt that you will call me Megaera Alexandrovna instead." She was right. Partially. We didn't bother with Alexandrovna. From that moment on, she was Megaera for us.

She wasn't a bad teacher. I liked writing for her, and she praised my work. But she was big and loud, and she was the antipode of Lily Aleksevna who had tamed us and then left us so abruptly and with crushing finality..

Dina hated Megaera with passion. Her grades in Literature plummeted. Her parents were called to the principal's office. Dina was full of anger, and I was her loyal friend. So were the two boys who went to the funeral. One night the four of us got into a telephone booth that stood at the corner of my apartment building. We dialed the number and called an Ambulance for Megaera. Then we split up and went straight home in order to establish some kind of an alibi. Megaera was serving soup in her home when an Ambulance arrived and announced that she, Megaera, was having a heart attack. She probably was ready to have one. But she didn't. She didn't press charges, either. She behaved as if nothing ever happened, except she asked Dina to turn in her work and graded her generously. And we all went on with our lives.

Fyodor, the Physics Teacher

In high school I knew where I was going after graduation. Physics was the destination. My friend Irka and I had spent most of our free time in a little lab behind the Physics classroom, helping Fyodor, our Physics teacher, to prepare an apparatus for demonstrations, rehearsing experiments to be presented in Fyodor's lessons, assembling circuits for labs. It took us a while to learn to appreciate Fyodor's jokes and to make Fyodor appreciate us. A Russian peasant turned Physics teacher in a big city school, Fyodor with his bushy eyebrows hanging low over small bright blue eyes, always kept to himself, teaching the subject forcefully, grading tests moderately, and expecting minimal interactions with his students. But we were determined and kept knocking on Fyodor's door early in the morning and in the late afternoon after classes, offering our able hands and spongy minds. Irka could easily get a Van de Graaff generator of static electricity from the top shelf while standing firmly on the floor. Tall as she was, she had no use for Fyodor's rickety step stool. My nimble fingers were fast and still patient separating thin wires and arranging them into a variety of simple, series, and parallel electrical circuits that Fyodor needed in order to illustrate how electricity flows. I remember Fyodor's booming approving laughter when we showed to him the color mixing experiment that we designed and developed for his lessons on Optics.

Applying to College

Irka and I both applied for admission to the University, the department of Physics, of course, and took our entrance exams. I did very well in both written and oral math exams, and rather well in oral Physics and in Russian composition. Irka also had good grades, although not as good as mine. Then we came to take the last exam, oral exam in foreign language, English for me, German for Irka. Irka became a student. I failed my English exam, A stern woman across the table refused to listen to my presentation prepared during the half an hour everyone got to prepare answers to the questions in the assignment. The stern woman took away my notes, and the page with my assignment without even glancing at them. Instead I was given a text from a manuscript on Geology and promptly demonstrated an insufficient vocabulary for reading and translating it with fluency. I failed.

And so for me it was the end of my Big Physics Dream. Actually, that summer in the famous four hundred feet long University Hallway with a multitude of statures depicting the great men of science which were standing tall between the broad and supertall windows, I met quite a number of new high school graduates who passed math and physics entrance exams with good marks, but failed either the Russian composition written exam, or the foreign language oral exam. They all were bitter but not surprised. They all were Jewish kids. The university didn't want them and so it methodically failed them using the whole arsenal of cleverly designed means to reduce Jewish presence in the student body. The victims quietly accepted their fate and immediately started a new marathon taking required exams in other schools, that happened to hold examinations later that summer.

I was lucky to make it into the math department of the University.

A few years later I ran into Irka on a suburban train. We both were married, each had a one year old child. Her husband also was a fellow student. Irka told me how the two of them went on several student exchange programs, visited Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany. They both planned to stay on to work on their doctorates. Our lives were truly worlds apart. The whole idea of travel on student exchange program would never even cross my mind. Jews do not travel abroad. Unless... unless they emigrate. At the time of our meeting on the train, I was quite certain that I would emigrate. And so I did. A few years later I got to travel abroad. From Russia. One way. No return ticket. No desire to come back even for a short visit. Not ever.

University

Life as a student was wonderful, classes, friends, museums, concerts, plays... Of course, in addition to Math courses for the math majors, other required courses included History of the Communist Party, Political Economy of Socialism, Political Economy of Communism, Scientific Atheism, Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, and every week we had compulsory sessions on Current Events, which were pure propaganda. Activism was not only encouraged, but practically required. I managed to satisfy some of the "activism" requirements by painting posters for various events, which generally was looked upon positively.

Military training was a once a week event that took the entire day. Upon graduation, all Math majors were commissioned Second Lieutenants of Artillery Reserve. Military training was compulsory. That military training was very important because of the compulsory draft. A boy who was eighteen was drafted into the Army for three years or into the Navy - for four years. If the boy became a student at the University prior to his eighteenth birthday, his draft was deferred till his graduation. Some schools offered military training which essentially replaced service in the Army. Our university was one of such schools.

My future husband and I met at the University Library. When we were dating, the question of emigration came up. Vladimir's family was very serious about it. Unlike my family which was practically clueless.

My Father-in-Law, the Zionist

Yosel Oliker was from David Gorodok. Poland. He and Sonia Bakelman were married and lived in Pinsk in Polesie province of Poland. Pinsk was a home to about 30,000 Jews before WWII, with Jewish schools, Yiddish newspapers, various Zionist organizations. Both Yosel and Sonia had a solid Jewish education, knew Hebrew. Yiddish was spoken at home. They lived traditional Jewish life with their two young sons. The extended family also lived nearby.

As a result of Stalin-Hitler nonaggression pact of 1939, that part of Poland was occupied by the Soviets, and the life changed significantly. Yosel found a job at a Soviet firm in order to support his family. It certainly helped that he spoke both Russian and Polish fluently.

June 22nd, 1941 was the day when Germans broke the nonaggression pact and started the war with the Soviets, and on the 4th of July 1941, the Nazi-German army conquered Pinsk. Prior to that date, the Soviets in Pinsk were feverishly evacuating into Russia. It happened so that Yosel's boss had room for Yosel on the train departing from Pinsk, He offered Yosel to evacuate along with the firm. That was a very hard decision to make. The whole extended family was staying, and Jews on the whole had had rather positive opinion about Germans and their imminent occupation, based on the experiences of the WWI. It is not clear what led Yosel to the decision to leave Pinsk, but he ran home. Together with Sonia they gathered a few belongings, scooped up the two boys, and with practically no time to say goodbye to the family, they boarded the crowded train and left.

Pinsk happened to be the first large city in occupied territories whose Jewish population was completely annihilated. Parents, brothers and sisters of both Yosel and Sonia, and their entire families perished in 1942.

The Yosel Oliker's little family ended up in a town on Volga river, the MidWest of Russia, so to speak. There they were refugees, foreigners, strangers. Life was very difficult. They had to endure double hardship, the hardship of being in the country at war and the hardship of being strangers. In addition, they were practically the only Jews around. In privacy of their room, Sonia lit Shabbos candles, Yosel conducted a complete Seder on Pesach, Sonia kashered meat in the room in order to avoid her neighbors in the kitchen which was shared by several families. The fact that they both spoke fluent Russian certainly helped to survive. After the war the horrible news about fate of their families in Pinsk reached them in the city of Ulianovsk, on Volga River.

The youngest son, Vladimir, was born there after the war, the only family member actually born in Russia. They wanted to name him Wolf, Velvel in Yiddish, in memory of Sonia's father who was killed by the Germans. But in postwar Ulianovsk office of registration of Births and Deaths, they were told firmly that such name didn't exist. They were told to name the child Vladimir, since Vladimir Lenin was born in that city several decades earlier. And so he became Vladimir Oliker. Since the family spoke Yiddish at home, Vladimir's first language was Yiddish.

Now it was a family of five, with three boys. They lived through Stalin's anti-Semitism, general hardship of living in Soviet Union, fear of losing jobs, fear of being persecuted for a single act of tardiness, fear of being questioned about relatives abroad... There were, in fact relatives abroad, those who left Poland prior to WWII and went to live in Palestine.

Moving to Israel had been the dream of Yosel's life. The dream that seemed to have no way to ever come true.

The oldest son Ishai graduated from high school and went to college. He was followed by his brother four years later. When the oldest son started working in the town of Yaroslavl located 250 km north-east of Moscow, he helped his parents and the younger brothers to move there from Ulianovsk. The town had a rather rich history, have been founded in 1010. It had several institutions for higher education... Quite shabby town, nevertheless, as it is customary in Russia. But it was close to Moscow, and so the family moved to Yaroslavl.

Often they tried to listened to a short-wave radio, tuning in for the Voice of Israel, the Voice of America, Free Europe, the German Wave, trying to catch the news from outside, the voices that were mercilessly jammed by the Soviet authorities. From the radio they heard about the first Jews who managed to emigrate from the Soviet Union. They heard that Russian premier Kosygin said in Paris in 1966 that as far as reunification of families was concerned, if Soviet Jews wanted to leave the country, the road was open to them. Of course these Kosygin's words never made it into the Soviet Press.

After the oldest son got married, he lived and worked in Leningrad, and he managed to move his parents there. Not an easy task at all, as the rules for change of residency were both strict and convoluted. The State controlled movements and whereabouts of its subjects. Certain cities were simply closed for people from other places. Leningrad was such closed city. Nevertheless Yosel and Sonia became residents of Leningrad. By that time Vladimir was a student at the University of Leningrad. Each Jewish holiday the family was getting together for a quiet celebration. When they sang Yiddish songs, they did it quietly. They sang Russian songs too, loudly, at Sonia's insistence, for the neighbors. And they talked about emigration, very quietly. In the end of the 1960s there were a few cases of people from Riga, Latvia , who were allowed to emigrate. Very few. But finally, the idea of going to Israel stopped being simply a dream.

Those were frightening times. In 1970 in Leningrad a group of twelve was arrested and tried for an attempt to hijack an airplane to get out of the Soviet Union, Most of the twelve were Jews whose requests for exit visas were refused several times. Two man were sentenced to death. Multiple demonstrations and protests all over the world forced the Soviets to commute the death sentences to fifteen year in prison. At the same time Jewish activists were arrested and tried in Leningrad, Riga, Moscow, and Kishinev, and the government was claiming links between all activists and the twelve persons on the hijack case. This makes one wonder if the hijack case was a provocation...

Applying fo Exit Visa

In order to apply for an exit visa one had to collect a lot of documents. First and foremost, an official two-page invitation from relatives in Israel had to arrive at the home address. The idea of a foreign official letter addressed to a Soviet Citizen and sent from Israel, no less, was very clever. It was a sure bet to put a Jew in a spotlight. Such letter would immediately start rumors among nosey and hateful neighbors.

The official invitation listed names, addresses and dates of birth of those invited. It also had a statement from the Israeli Foreign Ministry confirming the signature of the Israeli relative and stating that upon arrival the invited would be granted Israel citizenship.

Once such invitation was received, the invited would start the horrific process of obtaining papers.

- A reference from the place of work had to be addressed to the Visa Office and signed by the director of the firm, the leader of the Communist Party group, the chairman of the trade union. ( request for such reference often resulted in a loss of a job.)
- an application for an exit visa, six pages long with answers to such questions as who was the relative abroad, how, when and why they left the Soviet Union, what kind of communications had you had with this relative, how did you find this relative, why do you want to leave the Soviet Union...
- a letter from the office in charge of resident records in your building (request for this letter led to hostility from neighbors)
- letter from each parent stating their position regarding your desire to leave and the financial claims they might have upon you
- certificates of birth, marriage, death, divorce, diplomas, military records, party or young communist league records, trade union records, receipt showing that you've paid the tax for exit visa application...

Once all this was gathered (and everyone at your work and in your building had become privy of your secret plans to leave Motherland) the package was delivered in person to the visa office, and the waiting period started.

My In-Laws Are Leaving Russia Behind

In 1971 Yosel, Sonia, and the middle son Eliyahu with his wife Esther and their baby girl Rachel applied for exit visas. They left for Israel in April 1972. They were allowed to take US$50 per person, The pension that Yosel had earned was no longer his. They left Russia as stateless persons, refugees with no passport, but a pink document with a photograph, the exit visa. Their Russian citizenship was taken away from them, which was fine, but why did they have to pay money for it? five hundred rubles for each citizenship, 3-4 monthly salaries before taxes... But never mind, you pay for freedom, and freedom is priceless.

It was during that long wait inside of the Leningrad airport building, when my father-in-law, pacing the floor, overwhelmed with emotions of separation, told me how in 1941, the end of June, he took his wife and two young sons out of Poland on the train going to Russia, and left his parents and sister, his in-laws, his friends behind---to never see them again...

The oldest and the youngest sons didn't apply in 1971 because they both had Doctorates, and by that time no one with a PhD had ever gotten an exit visa. Once they learned about a case of a guy with a PhD who was let go, they both applied for an exit visa. Each had an invitation from his own parents who lived in Ashkelon and were ready to leave the Ulpan and move to Yerushalaim since they didn't really need the Ulpan, they knew Hebrew from their childhood. That was in 1972. Several months after turning in their applications, the oldest son, Ishai, got his permission to go, the youngest, Vladimir, didn't. He and his family became refusniks.

The Education Tax

Along with the great news of the exit visa granted to him and his family, Ishai learned about the new additional tax on all emigrants, a repay for the free higher education and professional degrees. The size of this diploma tax varied depending on the university and the degree achieved. For Ishai and his wife, both with PhDs, it amounted to over ten annual salaries. As a result Ishai decided to go with their little girl, and his wife would stay behind for the time being. She and their little boy would follow later when circumstances permit. This way they had to gather only about five annual salaries worth. They sold everything, Yosel collected funds in Israel, friends made contributions, and one day Ishai carried a LOT of cash to the central bank and deposited the money in return for a small receipt that he immediately delivered to the Visa office. In about two weeks he left the country with his five-year-old daughter.

The diploma tax was never rescinded, but two years later the Soviets simply stopped demanding it. Ishai's wife Mirra and his son joined him in Israel then.

How My Relatives Took the News

I was an only child, and my father died when I was a young girl. Mother raised me alone. She never remarried. By the time we applied for exit visa, mother was retired, as the retirement age for women in Russia was 55.

My mother's first reaction was "so I do not have a daughter." A bit theatrical, but one could understand her:
- she had never thought about emigration
- it was 1971, and she hadn't known anyone personally who was considering leaving Russia to go to live in Israel
- the overall anti-Semitic spirit in the country forced many Jews to select and stick to the "do not rock the boat" mentality
-Mother shared an apartment with the family of her sister. There were two grown sons with families, and everyone would be very nervous (and would behave accordingly) about possible repercussions of a close relative (me) coming out of a closet as a traitor of the Motherland!
- she pictured herself aging, lonely, getting feeble, sick, helpless, with her only child far away

Mother was upset, and angry. But she promptly signed all necessary papers upon my request. My cousins kept distance from me. My aunts didn't talk about it.

When we became refusniks, however, and certain dangers entered our daily lives, Mother gradually became incredibly supportive, and told me one day that she surely would join me once our trouble is over and we emigrate from Russia, and get settled in the new place.

Refusniks' life

Our child was born two years before we became refusniks. We named her Olya, after Yosel's sister Elka who was killed by the Germans in Pinsk in 1942.

The official reason for the refusal of exit visa was alleged secrets I was exposed to while at work - during my pregnancy. The real reason is unknown, but the tactics devised by the Soviet authorities were aimed at creating an atmosphere of total unpredictability. A Jew who desired to leave the country had to gamble since no one could ever be sure if his application would result in an exit visa or in long years of struggle to get a visa. Years spent as refusniks were surreal: the person lives a life where everything is illogical, arbitrary, there are no laws, only instructions. no plans to make, no idea what the future holds for you, you are out of your profession, your former friends are afraid of any contacts with you, your neighbors are seething if an eye contact takes place.

And yet, some loyal friends bravely stand by you, new friends are acquired, people who are in a similar situation. You make contacts with foreign reporters, you participate in forbidden gatherings, meetings, demonstrations, you travel to another city and join a demonstration there, you write letters, you sign letters written by others. These letters bother the authorities, they are written for that purpose. You are harassed by police, arrested by the KGB, interrogated, yelled at...

And you still go to museums, and to concerts and plays, and to the library. You swim in the summer and ski in the winter. You go to pick mushrooms in the woods in the Fall. You are trying to live your life even if your life stalled.

- Letters start arriving from abroad.
- An American, a Canadian or a British tourist might knock on your door and you welcome him or her, and usher them in, and you sit down and tell them what is going on with you and other refusniks, you give names, this one was arrested for teaching Hebrew. That one just was told that he would rot here. In that family the son was expelled from college and immediately became subject to conscription into the Army - now they wouldn't be able to leave without him for three more years, and then for who knows how many more years, because the Soviets do not let people who recently served in the army go abroad... The tourist would take this information outside of Russia....
- You arrange for regular phone calls from the United States, from England, you give the information about Jews who want to leave the country, who got in trouble, who needs help. Publicity is everything. Without publicity, without activists in the West one might be lost in the huge place called Russia, condemned, lost forever...
- A synagogue in Philadelphia adopts your family, contacts are so personable, people care, they keep your spirit up...
- A package arrives from Philadelphia, wonderful clothes for your little girl. She walks around in real American blue jeans, it warms your heart..
- In the yard of the Leningrad Synagogue you meet an American Vice Consul who came there to talk to refusniks, you make an appointment with him. At the agreed upon time two days later he is waiting for you when you make your attempt to enter the American Consulate. He steps forward, gets hold of your hand, and pulls you in while the police is trying to prevent it. You have a long meeting in the Consulate. You are walking down the street after the meeting, and a car stops and you are pulled into the car and taken to a KGB station, and interrogated by the KGB for two hours. A week later the Vice Consul and his wife visit you in you little apartment, and here you got a new connection that grows into a life long friendship, meanwhile it is another protection, another publicity, so maybe you'll survive, maybe the authorities would choose to let you be because they do not want a lot of noise made abroad in case of your disappearance...
- Your husband is arrested while giving the information about the Jews who want to leave over the phone. An American tourist happens to visit your apartment the following morning. The next day it is in all newspapers in Philadelphia...
- You are cut off everything professionally, you got to create your own world. It happens so that several people among those who are thinking about leaving and those who are waiting for the decision on their exit visa, and those who are refusnik, a good number of people among you are mathematicians, and so a Weekly Math Seminar is born and run in your small apartment. People prepare presentations and give them for the group...
- You meet an American Rabbi in front of the Leningrad synagogue. You spend the whole day together with him and his wife, strolling along the river, sitting an a park, and talking. Another life long friendship grows out of this meeting. The Rabbi and his wife have five children. You tell them that you'd like to have more children, but do not think that you can reproduce in captivity. They take with them a letter that you wrote for Mrs. Ford, the First Lady...

Refusnik's life

Life is so utterly unpredictable. But it goes on, and here you are completing the third year of waiting for an exit visa. All of a sudden your husband is told that his visa is granted to him, he may go, but you and the child would have to stay. What do you do? What kind of a decision is that? to split? for how long? forever? The child might end up growing up without her Dad. She would always be reminded about her Dad, the traitor, the man who betrayed his Motherland... If sentenced to life in Russia, how would she be able to live it? You decide to send her with her father, and ask the authorities to allow your daughter to emigrate with her Dad. You are called to the KGB office and told that you are unfit mother since you want to sent your child away. They would help you though. They would take the child from you and place her in a State orphanage. No child is lost in Mother Russia. You are scared out of your mind and you take your request back, and you never peep a word about your child going with her father. And the day arrives when you go to the airport, and he leaves, and you are left behind, and you have to live your life.

Your husband arrives in Vienna. He is on the phone with friends from Philadelphia. Come here, they advise him, We have many contacts on the Capitol Hill, we are working diligently on building more publicity, together we'll be able to get your wife and child out. And he goes to Rome where the American Embassy has an Immigration office, and he applies for an entrance visa to the US. He spends the summer in Italy, waiting for his papers to be processed, he travels and falls in love with the country. Finally he flies to the United States and is welcomed by friends from the Reform congregation that had adopted his family. People who have been so active in promoting his case, and now are all charged to get his family out of Russia. He starts teaching at Temple University and meets important people and presents the case of his divided family, and his American friends work with him.

Meanwhile you look after your child, you see your friends, you wonder if your family would ever be together again, if you'd ever see your husband again.

No one knows what exactly caused the Russians to let you out. It could be the demonstration in New York... It could be a request from an American VIP made directly to a Soviet VIP... It could be the visit that the American Vice Consul paid to the Director of the Visa Office in Leningrad... It could be the prayer by a Catholic nun in Vatican who told your husband that she would pray for you... It could be lots of letters sent by the Americans to the Supreme Soviet demanding your freedom... It could be a result of one or many actions by many people who were active in helping you to get out.

But it did happen, a call from the Visa Office, invitation to stop by. Casual verbal statement that you may go, and here we are giving you an exit visa. They give you a red Soviet passport because they tell you that you are allowed to go to live in the USA. As before, totally unpredictable, illogical, surreal. But what a relief! Several days later you are out of there! It had been over nine months since your husband's departure.

About Jobs

At the time when I was applying for exit visa, i worked part-time as a lecturer in Mathematics at School of Engineering. That job immediately became off limits for me lest I poison minds of my students, who were about the same age I was.

When we became refusniks, found a job as a programmer at a shoe factory. Except when you are a refusnik, you keep applying for an exit visa - every year, and have to request all documents needed for application again, and the new place of employment learns about your being a traitor of the Motherland, and you lose that job as well.

At my shoe factory job. the programmers were sitting at the tables in a large room on the top floor of the building. The desk occupied by the boss had a telephone, the only one in the room. Programmers were allowed to receive calls on that phone. In such case someone would yell out, So and So there is phone call for you, and So and So would run to the Boss' desk to answer the call. Once a KGB officer called on that phone for me and made sure to announce that he was a KGB officer and he needed to talk to me. The woman who answered that call thought that was a hilarious joke,. as she hollered, "Elena, this call is for you, and tell your boyfriends to come up with better jokes next time, how about that, the KGB is after our Elena!" Little did she know, They were indeed after me. They actually wanted to alarm my coworkers and make my life at work impossible. In this particular case they failed to accomplish that.

When, however the time came for me to apply for exit visa again, I asked for my reference letter and was asked to resign if I really wanted that letter, which I did.

My last government job in Russia was as an elevator operator, and that one didn't last long either. It had this schedule of 24 hours at work, and 48 hours of free time. I had to be on duty in a small room in the basement of an apartment building. If someone got stuck in the elevator in one of several buildings under my care, I would go on a rescue expedition. Mostly those were drunk men who would get into a cabin and forget to push the button, instead they would take a nap, wake up, realize that they hadn't moved yet, push the emergency button in alarm, and I would come and tell them to push the button for their floor. Sometimes there were more complicated cases, and the mechanism had to be tweaked manually, but mostly nothing happened during those lonely 24 hours. Except once I heard the key in the door in the middle of the night. I got very scared, and for a good reason: it was a drunk plumber who somehow obtained the key to the operators' room. While he was fooling with the door, I pushed the door at him, quickly got out and run fast all the way home in the darkness of the night. thus I abandoned my post and in the morning I quit that job officially.

Actually as a married woman with a child, I was not required by law to hold a government job. All men and all women without children were. If one didn't have a job, he or she could be tried, found to be a "parasite" and sentenced to live and work to a place at least 100 km away from the city.

One well known case of a "parasite" is the trial of Joseph Brodsky who was in his twenties when he was sent to a village as a laborer. This is Joseph Brodsky, the poet, the Nobel Prize man. Writing poetry was not an official government job, unless one was a member of the writer's union with books published in the government publishing houses, or poems and stories published by the government literary magazines. Brodsky's work was not publishable as it was not the "official poetry", so he was declared a "parasite."

After my failure as an elevator operator, I did math tutoring and also knitted for money. I was pretty good at both, however, those were illegal activities, and an extreme care had to be taken in order to run such clandestine operations.

Coming to America

With my exit visa carefully tacked into my purse which I wouldn't let out of my hands even for a moment, we took a train from Leningrad to Moscow. My mother and one of my friends came along. The friend (she lives in Boston now) came to be with my mother and take her back to Leningrad after my departure. Many people came to the railway station to say goodbye. We slept on the train and arrived in Moscow in the morning. We stayed over night at my Moscow aunt's place, and my father's relatives came to say goodbye. It was a strange gathering, as if I was attending my own funeral. Except with my nieces it felt like being a liar. My nieces were told that I was moving to a Siberian Research Center where my husband had already been working on a secret project. And that we wouldn't be able to travel freely for a long time. That was my cousin's way of dealing with a danger of spreading the news of a family member turned a traitor of the Motherland. That was the same cousin who trembled with fear but always insisted that we stayed with her and her family whenever we were visiting Moscow. Her love and dedication to us was always above her fear. She lives in Arad, Israel, now. They arrived in Israel during the first Gulf war, when Saddam was firing Scud missiles targeting Israeli cities and towns. They were given gas masks as soon as they got off the plane... My departure preceded hers by fifteen years. At the time of my departure we both thought that we would never see each other again.

A taxi cab came at 4 am, and we went to Sheremetievo Airport, which is the Moscow international airport. The wait was long. A custom officer told me to take a small golden chain off my little daughter's neck and give it to my mother who was waiting outside. It wasn't allowed because the chain was golden. A small thing, a token of love from Vladimir's cousin, but oh well... We got on the Soviet plane and it took off and flew in the direction of Rome, Italy. When we were approaching Rome, a frightening sound of everything falling apart made me think that THEY actually got me, visa or no visa, I was doomed. Would they really down a planeful of people just to stop me and my child from getting out of their control?.. Probably, I thought. Why not?.. They had proved their ability of orchestrating monstrous actions time and again... But no, it was simply a scare, no disaster. Only when we finally disembarked at the Aeroporto di Leonardo da Vinci, and walked away from that gate, only then did I allow myself to believe that my Soviet life truly and irreversibly came to its end.

There were two Armenian families on the same plane, and I remember my conversation with a young Armenian beaming with happiness.
   "Where are you going in America," he asked me.
   "Philadelphia," I replied
   "Terrific," he boomed. "And I'm going to Los Angeles. We gonna be neighbors!"

And so we arrived in Rome, Italy where we would apply for refugee visas to enter the United States. HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, had its offices in a building on Viale Regina Margherita in Rome and it provided help with the immigration process as well as means for room and board while refugees were waiting for clearance and the permission to enter the US. HIAS also paid for the travel from Rome to New York once the clearance process was successfully completed.

It was a HIAS hired driver or maybe a representative of HIAS who met us at the airport and took us to a pension hotel for emigrants from Russia. It was Sunday, March 21st, 1976, a bright warm sunny day. The city was rather quiet, with all stores, shops, and banks closed. The hotel, however, was filled with voices.
   "What did you bring?" a large woman stopped me as I was lagging my suitcase toward the assigned room.
   "A bit of clothes," I responded. My little girl was very tired and, more than anything else, I wanted to get to our room and close the door.
   "Nobody will buy it," the woman stated accusingly.
   "I do not intend to sell," I answered.
   "But what did you bring to sell?" the woman insisted.
   "A soul?" I tried. The woman thought it over.
   "Nobody will buy it," she scornfully triumphed over my daftness, and finally left me alone.

Here we were at last, in our room with two narrow beds and a small table. The bathroom was down the hall. I looked out of the window into a well-like courtyard. Then I tried to turn down Olya's bed only to find that the sheets were clean but torn in several places. And those torn sheets were just too depressing. I had to do something right away. I had to call my friends who left Russia a month earlier and were still in Rome waiting for their papers to be processed. I grabbed Olya's hand and we marched to the hotel's receptionist whom I asked to lend me a telephone token. Since all banks and stores were closed, I was pretty much stuck with my five twenty dollar bills which were all the money that I had. One was not allowed to exchange more than fifty dollars worth per person prior to departure. The receptionist looked at me with a mild suspicion, but handed me a token. I dialed the number that I had written in my small address book, and talked to a stranger on the other end. I asked him to tell my friends Vera and Serge that Lena had arrived in Rome and was taken to the hotel pension on via Giovanni Florio. The stranger said he would pass the message. We returned to the room and sat down on a bed next to each other, sad and tired. I pulled Olya closer to me and cuddled her and stroke her head until she fell asleep. I sat still and tried to read. Two hours later I heard familiar voices, a knock on the door, and my life became beautiful again. Olya woke up and smiled. She recognized the voices. I opened the door, and my friends rushed in, laughing. We hugged, we cried, we laughed, we joked, then we picked up my suitcase, gave Serge's phone token to the receptionist, and walked out of the pension hotel.

We moved in with my friends who lived in Ostia, on the Tyrrhenian Sea, a thirty minute train ride from the Roman Termini, a small town that was used as a transit station for Soviet Jewish emigrants. First we shared a room with my friend Mira, and later got that room for ourselves as Mira moved in with another friend, still in the same apartment.

The next day Serge and I took a train to Rome and went to the Round Market to get food for our little circle of friends, Mira, Serge with Vera and their little boy, and Olya and I. The day of surprises started with the many posters - on the train, on a bus, on the walls - posters featuring the red flags with the hammer and sickle... The Italian Communist Party's posters seemed to be everywhere.
   "You'll get used to this," Serge tried to calm me down.
   "They are mad," I kept repeating.

We entered a huge market and started moving between fantastic displays with beautifully arranged vegetables, millions of cheeses, hundreds of different breads, trays and trays with dried spices and nuts... By the time we got to the fish market, the smells, the colors, the overwhelming abundance made me feel dizzy. I literally was ready to faint. The fish market was most fascinating, with amazing creatures of every kind, live and moving around in shallow tanks, or on huge trays... We bought some potatoes (the food of the Russian populace) which here were more expensive than oranges, we loaded the backpacks with fruit and vegetables of many kinds, We chose breads and confections, and cheeses, and slowly made our way back to our Ostia apartment.

The first visit to the HIAS office included a long wait, filling out forms, answering questions, getting instructions, setting up the next appointment and writing down directions to a city office where I got a Museum card which entitled me to free entrance to Roman museums.

We were coming to Rome from our Ostia home for long strolls, for museums, for an occasional cappuccino as the main food for me and a pastry - for Olya. I had stopped paying attention to the red posters, but still was utterly annoyed when once we got on the top of a double decker as I had promised to Olya we would, and got very wonderful seats, and the bus moved along the streets for a little while, and then came to stop because the driver went on strike.

I studied displays in the windows of fancy boutiques, and bought some yarn and knitted a few sweaters. One was immediately exchanged for a beautiful finger ring, another was sold to a fellow emigrant lady. We rummaged through piles of silk scarfs in the market places and bought the ones we admired the most, deciding to compensate for these unbudgeted purchases by cutting our food expenses a bit more.

A month and a half after our arrival my husband came to meet us in Rome. He finished teaching his classes and got on a plane and arrived from Philadelphia. We were finally together again, after almost a year long separation. A large group of emigrants got together in our apartment in Ostia. People were anxious to learn about his life in America. He answered questions patiently, and his answers were helpful. Until a woman asked what women wore in America.
   "Nothing," he said. Then added, "I mean they wear sweatsuits, because they are mostly in their cars."

The next day we got on a train and went to Florence where we spent several days. Firenze, Florence, became our most favorite city, a place we always want to visit again.

We came back to Rome because I got a message that my flight to America was scheduled for May 26th. On that day my daughter and I flew to New York, and my husband flew to Israel to visit his parents whom he had not seen for five years.

First Impressions

My friend Lynn met us in JFK and drove us to our first home in America, a ranch house in Morristown NJ. Lynn and her husband Lewis were American tourists who visited us in Leningrad in the middle of the second year of our refusnik life. We had stayed in touch, exchanged letters carefully numbering them so that we could check with each other how many were actually delivered and which ones were lost... Lynn sent me two parcels with cute things for Olya. She sent me photographs of her three daughters, Cara, the Oldest, and the twins who are Olya's age. When we finally got out of Russia, Lynn was my first hostess in America.

In the morning when breakfast was served in Lynn's bright kitchen, each girl got a glass of milk for cereal and a glass of orange juice. Too excited to eat they hardly touched their food. And later Olya and I saw in amazement how juice and milk were dumped from the glasses into the sink, and swirled together going down the drain. In our former corner of the world orange juice was a luxury, and our two months of plenty in Italy hadn't wiped out the habits of handling orange juice with care.

During our first ten days in America,
- we got to sit on raspberry colored plastic chairs and taste our first Baskin-Robbins scoops in a cone,
- a photographer from the local paper came to take pictures of us, and a reporter interviewed me,
- a nun came for lunch, she was delighted to see me free, she had been actively working on our behalf.
- I was taken to the Loehmanns and experienced the communal fitting room while trying on one thing after another.
- Lynn who graduated from Julliard, played for me, and I sat very close to her concert Steinway.
- On Sunday Olya got a party dress from Lynn, full length, beautiful dress, and she wore it to a birthday party for a friend of the twins.
- I attended
- - a formal dinner party on the occasion of Lynn's friend's birthday,
- - an informal garden party when Lynns brother and his wife came over for a day,
- - a family dinner party at the home of Lewis' partner.
I did a lot of talking, and a lot of listening, and found it rather difficult to participate in group conversations, where several people were talking, sometimes interrupting each other.

Then we went to Philadelphia to start our life there. I was rather impressed with the gracious and elaborate U-shaped four-story building where we were to join my husband who had been renting a first floor apartment. I liked the spacious center courtyard with a fountain, red brick walls, round columns at the entrance, high ceilinged rooms, tall windows, hardwood floors. It mattered so little to me that the building wasn't in great shape, with peeling paints and crumbling edges of the brick steps, that the fountain wasn't working and the landscape was virtually non-existent. It was a building with class, and I loved it. We had a one-bedroom apartment with a lot of space, it was filled with light (or would be if I washed the windows), the old china cabinets in the kitchen separated cooking area from the eat-in part, a pedestal sink in the bathroom with chipped porcelain still looked so very foreign, built-in bookcase in the living room featured elaborate molding...

The stove had layers of grease, the kitchen sink needed a lot of cleaning, and, of course, the windows... I was determined to do it all. The first things I selected on my first trip to the supermarket were all kinds of cleaning supplies.

I was taken to the supermarket by Miriam and Ricki, the two women from the synagogue Keneseth Israel, which adopted us four years earlier. Ricki told me to buy rolls of foil and saran wrap, Miriam showed the date on packages and suggested that I turn over packaged strawberries and check freshness of the berries on the bottom of a little green plastic basket. I had to choose from several different brands of instant coffee. We discussed what kind of cereal to buy. I was told to consider a family pack of chicken thighs because I would be able to make three packages and put two in the freezer while using the third one to cook dinner. We kept putting things into the shopping cart and I pushed it along the aisles. We had a good time in the store, and Olya was very agreeable during the adventure, and so we loaded my nearly bursting brown bags into the car trunk and drove to a gigantic toy store where Olya was told to choose one gift from Miriam and another one - from Ricki, which she did after understandably long deliberations.

By the time my husband came back from Israel, we had already gotten all settled in our apartment, had a Shabbat dinner with a young family, our neighbors Josh and Judy, visited the Art Museum, explored the neighborhood, chose a few outfits for Olya in Ricki's children clothing store, went with Miriam to the Social Security office to apply for the SSN, met several families from Congregation Keneseth Israel, discussed summer camp and school for Olya, were advised that a two-bedroom apartment was a must, were taken apartment hunting. I was shown a number of spic and span two bedroom apartments, but they all looked so small in comparison to out spacious, albeit shabby, one-bedroom Mt. Airy palace. I decided to stay put.

In order to choose a school for Olya Miriam took me to visit all Jewish schools in Philadelphia. We decided on Forman Day School in Elkins Park. It was housed in Beth Shalom Synagogue designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, which I thought was grand... It proved to be a very good choice. Mrs. Landis, the Principal, and Mrs Lane, Olya's first teacher, and families of her ten classmates all contributed to the richness of her first school experience. We were offered a partial scholarship. By the time when the first tuition payment was due I had gotten used to paying with a check which was an almost unbearable novelty at the time of my first rent payment a month earlier. The whole money handling business, writing checks, making deposits, recording transactions, applying for a credit cards, I had read about it, but only now i started doing it myself.

Money experience in Mother Russia was singularly cash based. On a payday at work a man or a woman from Payroll department would arrive with a suitcase full of money. A line would form with a head at a table where the payroll person sat with rosters and the suitcase full of cash. When your turn came, the payroll person would find your name in the roster, read out the amount to be paid, count the money, give it to you, and cross your name out. The Trade Union person would grab your hand and demand the membership fee. The Communist leader would do the same to those who were the members of the Party. Someone else would be collecting money for a present for a coworker with an upcoming life cycle event. Whatever is left you take home. And it is what it is - cash.

The first Friday night service in Kenneseth Israel surprised me greatly because organ music was played during the service. Dr. Bertram Korn, the Rabbi, was a Rear Admiral in the Navy.

Another surprise was my first interaction with the police. This is what happened:

We drive downtown for the my first Symphony concert at the Academy of Music, Broad and Locust. Trying to fit into a rather small parking spot on the street. Parallel parking, Backing slowly into the space. The police car behind us is really making this harder. Something must be wrong, why is this police car just standing there, holding the traffic. Straightening out the wheel, then pulling forward, then back, just a tad. Done. Now, what does the cop want? Reluctantly, I look back. There are two cops in the car, they roll their windows down. Oh boy, what do they want? But wait, they are smiling.
   "Way to go," says one,
   "Good job," says the other and they drive on, the traffic is restored.
   "Can you believe it?" I say to my husband, "The police was holding the traffic so that you could complete parallel parking with no disruption. They actually were standing there in order to help us.. The police? To help? Wow!"

The Philadelphia Year

While in Philadelphia, I translated a book on Math for Scripta publishing House and was woring on another book for the same publisher, worked as an interpreter contracted by Berlitz, held a job as a programmer in Philadelphia Gas Works. When I started at the PGW, in the forty strong crowd of programmers, I was the only woman. Another woman was hired a bit later, and I trained our secretary during our lunch breaks, and she successfully passed the aptitude test, and was hired as a programmer trainee shortly before my departure.

Moving to the MidWest

We lived in Philadelphia for a year, but in the summer of 1977 we rented a U-haul trailer and moved to a college town in the Midwest where we both had job offers. I had a visiting lecturer's position which was thrown in to sweeten the offer for my husband, which was for a tenure track professorship. During our seven years in the Midwest, I acquired several friends. My mother emigrated from the SU and came to live with us. We were granted citizenship. I went to Omaha, Nebraska for an interview at the Immigration and Naturalization office. I actually became a citizen in Davenport, Iowa, my friend Maureen, an Irish woman with green eyes, born and raised in Indiana, was my witness. The next morning a big celebration took place at my work. The office was richly decorated with red blue and white streamers, little flags were everywhere. I was given a stars and stripes hat to wear, American Apple pies were served, and I was taken for a half an hour ride in somebody's Chevrolet. Our daughter Aviva joined our family a few short months after I became a citizen.

Coming to Atlanta

In 1984 we moved to Atlanta where my husband became a professor at Emory, and I had an offer from a softwarehouse. Atlanta looked as an excellent choice because of the large Jewish community. We also wanted a city with a big international airport in order to simplify our travel. We came here four times prior to our move, interviewing for jobs, looking for a house, visiting schools, checking out the program for the seniors at the JCC for my mother. We liked the trees, and the seasons, Oxford Book store, parks, the Appalachian trail being within an hour and a half drive... We moved and made friends -in the synagogue, among the coworkers, other parents in the schools that our girls attended, Mother got settled in her own apartment in Buckhead, got involved in volunteering work and made new friends in the building. Her English was sufficient for fostering strong relationships. Mother became a citizen here in Atlanta.

Schools

For her high school our oldest daughter chose Druid Hills High, she liked the idea of her school being practically on Emory campus. Aviva started at Beth Jacob pre-school, By the time she became a firstgrader, the TDSA was already operating at the Yeshiva building. Our son Yosef was born to us in 1987 here in Atlanta. His first school was an infant room at the day care at my work. Then it was Emory day care till he was ready for Morah Dina Friedman's kindergarten at the TDSA. Aviva is a graduate of Yeshiva Atlanta. Our Yosef was a student in three Jewish schools: TDSA, Hebrew Academy and Yeshiva Atlanta. We live in the Beth Jacob neighborhood and have been members of congregation Beth Jacob for twenty plus years. Yosef is a college student at Emory now. Both our girls went to Emory for undergraduate studies, and continued their education in graduate programs. Olya lives in Washington, DC and Aviva lives in New York City.

B4ME

In 2001 I published a book, B4ME, for ages eight to a hundred and twenty. It is a fictionalized account of our escape from the Soviet Russia, This story, B4me, is about a young Jewish boy whose life is interrupted by his time and space travel into tumultuous past of his family. He finds himself in Communist Russia and witnesses the harsh life a quarter of a century ago. I wrote it as a boy's story, since I find fewer general interest books written about boys than about girls, especially story-telling books.

A lot in this story is based on real life experiences. It is an accurate account of events in recent history. Precision and accuracy are very important to me as history of Jews in the Soviet Union is being whitewashed now after the collapse of the Soviet Empire.

This book is a tribute to the many many people who were involved in the "Free the Soviet Jews" movement during the 1970s:
- the baby boomers who were "adopting" refusniks families, writing and telephoning them, sending visitors, making their voices heard in demonstrations and petitions,
- those who "twinned" themselves with a child of Bar or Bat Mitzvah age in the Soviet Union, wearing the bracelets with names of refusniks, writing letters, participating in demonstrations and rallies along with their parents,
- those who traveled behind the "Iron Curtain" and had there share of adrenaline pumping when noticed and followed by KGB or police
- those who were sending packages for the Prisoners of Zion incarcerated in Russian Gulag.

The book has a web site: http://lenamatis.net/BOOK/

It came out shortly before the horrific 9-11, and I haven't really done much about its promotion, as I am still busy redefining my life in this totally redefined world.

December 2006
Atlanta, Georgia