Yuliy Vaysman, Ella Romm, Michael Romm : другие произведения.

From Bessarabia To... Story of a Life

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   FROM BESSARABIA TO...
  
  Story of a Life
  In Two Parts
  
  Memoirs by Yuliy Vaysman
  
  
  Compiled and edited by Ella Romm
  Translated from Russian
  by Ella Romm and Michael Romm
  
  
  
  San Diego, USA, 2021
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  No Yuliy Vaysman, Ella Romm, Michael Romm, 2021
  PART ONE. Kishinev
  
  In memory of all my loved ones
  
  
  
  My Roots: The Meites Family
  
  My earliest memories of my family date back to the pre-war years, when my parents, Genya and Lev Vaysman, and I lived in Kishinev, in my grandmother Tseytl's house, several years after my grandfather Yoil's death.
  
  
  
   Tseytl Averbuch (Meites) Yoil Meites
  
  The city of Kishinev was first mentioned in 1436. After the war with Napoleon in 1812, Kishinev and all of Bessarabia became a part of the Russian Empire until 1918. After the First World War, it was taken by Romania. In 1940, due to the rearrangement of the European territories between Germany and the
  USSR, Bessarabia (now called Moldavia) became the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (one of 15 republics of the USSR. Then, it gained independence as the state of Moldova in 1991.
  Grandfather Yoil Meites came from a family of rabbis, and grandmother Tseytl was (by a family legend) a descendant of the famous rabbi Ben Sarah, born in 1791 in Poland.
  
  Yoil Meites was born in Balta, Bessarabia (near Odesa, Ukraine), a small outpost on the northern border of the Ottoman Empire (in Turkish, Balta means an axe). From the 18th to the 20th centuries, most of the townspeople were Jews. The city survived two pogroms, a plague, and significant flooding. According to the Bessarabian archives, the Meites family moved from Balta to Kishinev in the late 19th century.
  
  Grandfather Yoil had a family business that mainly consisted of collecting, utilizing, and selling secondary materials (primarily clothes) to factories. After his death (around 1925), his wife Tseytl and the children (mostly his son Kolman) ran the business. I remember the piles of worn clothes in the backyard and the workers who, with primitive machines, were packing them into countless bags. I also recall the animal bones processed into bone coal and sold to a sugar factory as an adsorbent. Grandfather Yoil ran his business together with his half-brother Yosef. While on a business trip in Warsaw, Yosef was accidentally killed by police in a crossfire with bandits.
  
  My great-grandmother Esther was married twice, once to a religious widower with children, and Yosef was a son from a previous marriage. Esther herself ran the business trading lubricants. She died of pneumonia at old age. Yosef had four children. His wife Aidl died young of cancer. After her tragic and unexpected death, the care of Yosef's family was placed on Yoil's shoulders, who by then already had 3 sons, Yankel, Eliyahu, and Kolman, and two daughters, Clara and Genya. The successful business allowed Yoil to provide food for a large family and educate all the boys. Even one of his nieces, who had shown interest in knowledge, completed 4 elementary school grades, even though education for girls was not popular then.
  
  Meites' house was on the outskirts of Kishinev, on Pavlovskaya Street, next to the railway station Visternicheny, on a small river Byik. There were large rooms filled with heavy wooden furniture. Each summer, Yoil sent his family out of the city. In 1903, this custom saved Meites from the famous Kishinev pogrom, known as the pogrom on Asian Street. The pogrom was triggered by the murder of a 14-year-old boy for which the newspaper 'Bessarabetz' blamed the Jews. As a result of the pogrom, 49 people were killed, 586 were wounded or injured, and over 1500 houses that made up one-third of all households in Kishinev were destroyed. The Kishinev pogrom received a great public outcry in Europe and Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. A famous Russian writer, Lev Tolstoy, and professors of the Moscow University Vladimir Vernadskiy and Sergey Trubetzkoy accused the Russian state of surrendering the murderers.
  
  In the United States, my daughter Ella met Mabel Meites, the widow of Professor Joseph Meites, my second cousin. In 1920, his father and his family immigrated to the United States. Prof. Joseph Meites became a major American neurophysiologist who studied aging processes. His studies served as the basis for his students Guillemin, Schally, and Yalow, who were Nobel Prize winners in Physiology in 1977. Prof Meites' brother Samuel became an American biochemist, medicine historian, and lab diagnostics specialist.
  
  Now, let's go back to my grandfather, Yoil Meites. His second son, Kolman, who was also involved in the family business, was a solid man with a smile. I remember his petite wife Pesya wearing her colorful robe. On July 28, 1940, after the Soviets occupied Bessarabia and entered Kishinev, Kolman Meites and his wife were arrested and sent into exile, where Kolman died of typhus in the town of Samarkand (Uzbekistan). Grandmother Tseytl escaped such a fate because, luckily, she was not at home when the NKVD arrested her son. (NKVD - People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs during the era of Joseph Stalin, the primary state ministry responsible for the mass terror.)
  
  The eldest son of Yoil Meites, Ilyusha (Eliyahu Meitus, a famous Hebrew poet in the future), displayed great interest in literature and was sent to study at the Sorbonne University in Paris, which he later left unfinished due to the outbreak of the First World War.
  
  Continuing his education at Petrograd University, Ilyusha joined the other Jewish poets of Russia led by Khaim Bialik, a poet who wrote in Hebrew and Yiddish. During the revolution, Ilyusha was on the Interim Government's side. But grandfather Yoil saved his son from the upcoming upheaval in Petrograd by transferring him to Odessa University, closer to home.
  
  
  
  
  Eliyahu Meites
  
  After the so-called Brest Peace Accord (March 3, 1918) between the new Bolshevik government of Russia and the 'Central Powers' (German Empire, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire), Bessarabia (Moldova) was ceded to Romania. Ilyusha was told to return to Kishinev immediately to stay with his family.
  
  By then, he had been married, but his wife Betty did not want to follow her husband and stayed on the other side of the Russian border. Eliyahu Meites became a Director of the Jewish Gymnasium (a typical school for the general education of children) in Soroki in 1921. Then, they went to Palestine with his second wife, Lisa, in 1935.
  
  He worked there as a teacher and published his poems and translations. The first poem in Hebrew ('Lilith') was published in 1910 in the magazine 'haShiloah' with support from Khaim Bialik. In Palestine and later, when it became the state of Israel, he published several poetry books, an extensive anthology of contemporary poetry, and memories of his childhood and youth in Kishinev. He also gained popularity as a translator, mainly in Yiddish. Among his translations into Hebrew are Baudelaire's 'Fleurs du Mal' (Flowers of Evil) and two volumes of military memoirs of Charles de Gaulle. I remember my mother repeating lines from his lyrics: 'You're so tender, you're so gentle as if you were woven from the rays of the moon...' We possess a book of Eliyahu's sonnets, 'On the Edge of the Second Bridge, ' written in Hebrew. Here is a translation of the sonnet 'I am like a living gem...' by Sheli Fain from Canada:
  
  I am like a living gem in a fog of the Universe
  Stuck in the darkness of the Ecumenical Tower,
  I am rising forward behind God,
  I will not fall: my palm is in His hand.
  Look, I did not escape the wanderer's fate,
  The road got entangled in the net of the foreign Moon.
  But give me time, and we will stay on the doorsteps
  Of the sacred Palace- the point of beginning.
  There has been blazing eye fire,
  There is a warm ray of light in the depths of amber,
  
  There is the silence of forests and seeds of meadows;
  Always will come the right day among the stream of days,
  In spite of the fog on the mirror of the Universe,
  The grieving soul shall arise, of course.
  
  Once uncle Ilyusha arrived in Kishinev, he brought a colorful oriental dress for my mother and a book of postage stamps for me. This event caused me to begin collecting stamps, although the first collection unfortunately completely disappeared during World War II. In 1946, I started collecting again. Now, my collection has thousands of stamps and is waiting for my disciples.
  
  
  
  Eliyahu Meitus Street in Tel Aviv
  
  During the war and especially the harsh post-war years, we repeatedly received parcels from the Red Cross with clothing and food. I thought everything was coming from my uncle in Palestine. However, that was not the case. My uncle Ilyusha explained that, while working as a teacher and financing his books, he could not help us. I remember how my father sent a few packages with paper to Palestine for publishing purposes.
  
  The youngest Yoil's son, Yankel, died at the age of 20 of complications following his bike accident. Yoil's daughter Klara died of childbirth, leaving a baby girl, Esther, in the care of her father. In 1939, Esther was visiting us in Kishinev, and I fell in love for the first time. By then, my father had rented a 4-bedroom apartment on Prunkulovskaya Street (which continued as General Inzov Street).
  
  
  
  House on Prunkulovskaya Street (photo by Steinchik)
  
  General Inzov was a Governor of Bessarabia during the famous Russian poet A. Pushkin's exile in Kishinev. Esther had visited us when my father bought a wagon of apples in Romania for resale, and the entire apartment was soaked in a fragrant odor and packed with numerous boxes. Later, our family learned the tragic story of Esther's death. At the age of 16, she married a Romanian engineer. In 1940, the fascist regime of General Antanesku came to power in Romania. In 1941 or 1942, Esther and her husband tried to escape from the regime on a ship that sank in the Black Sea. Perhaps it was the Bulgarian ship 'Struma' that was evacuating the Jewish refugees to Palestine but was hit by a Soviet submarine on February 24, 1942.
  
  The story of the Meites family ends with my mother, Genya, who was often called Anna. My father affectionately called her Kutzala, from the Romanian name Anikutza. The exact date of birth of Anna Meites has yet to be discovered. Although her passport had her date of birth in 1906, I think she was born at the beginning of the century because she remembers episodes related to the 1903 pogrom.
  
  
  
  Genya (Anna) Vaysman (Meites) 1970, Sholokhovskiy
  
  My Roots: Vaysman family
  
  My grandfather Mendel was a strong and respectful man. He led the entire family, and everybody grouped around him. Each Saturday, all the relatives would sit together around the huge table, and grandmother Heyved (Yekheved), who was taller than her husband, would stand near him with a bottle of wine that grandpa Mendel drank after praying on the bread. Then, he would wipe his mustache, and Shabbat began. I remember how the table was full of massive geese and turkeys, fish, and pastrami, all cooked by my grandma and numerous relatives participating in the meal. Grandpa Mendel was a merchant. He bought grain from Moldavian farmers and sold it to the mills. Grain was delivered on big wagons and stored in a huge barn in the backyard. This yard stood side by side with my mother's family's yard. Grandpa Mendel had established excellent relationships with the farmers. When they would bring grain, he fed and treated them with wine, and the peasants respected him. He was very religious and belonged to the synagogue across the road.
  
  My father, Lev Vaysman, was the fifth, or, possibly, the seventh child in the family, but all the prior children died very early in life. He also had three younger siblings, David, Ita, and Kopel.
  
  My father graduated from a Jewish school that coincidentally was named after a Vaysman, unknown to us. He started to help grandpa Mendel in his business, buying grain and selling it to the mills. At some point, grandpa, wishing to get his son more education, sent him to Vienna Polytechnic Institute, which my dad had not finished for an unknown reason. He came back to Kishinev to continue working as a trader. When the time came to serve in the Romanian army, grandpa Mendel took advantage of the law that allowed him to pay off his son's service. He gave the senior officer some money and a horse, and my dad became a second lieutenant and was released from duty. However, this ridiculous episode played an ill joke with my father later when the Soviet authorities charged him with espionage based on his service in the Romanian army, which never happened.
  
  Aunt Ita died young, leaving two daughters, Galya and Raya, to her husband. He lived in Bulboki near Kishinev.
  
  
  
  Ita Vaysman and her husband, Lazer Shpigel
  
  The Meites and Vaysman families lived side by side, and after my parents got married, they stayed in grandmother Tseytl's house, where I was born in 1928. I was named Yuliy after my grandfather Yoil. When I was 3, we moved from the Meites' house to the two-bedroom apartment on Prunkulovskaya Street in Mr. Katz's yard. My brother Fima was born in this apartment in 1934. Soon after his birthday, we moved to the same building's four-bedroom apartment on the 2nd floor. At the age of 4, Fima fell from the second-floor window. It seemed that he had lost his balance while I had turned away. I tried to grab his leg unsuccessfully, catching only a shoe that stayed in my hand. He fell directly into the flower pot, which softened his fall. I ran outside and brought him home. Luckily, uncle Kopel had walked by, so he called Dr. Urbanovich, our family doctor. There were no consequences to the fall except for a scar. This outcome significantly diminished the sense of guilt that I experienced after this accident.
  
  As a child, I had a nanny named Nastya. Nastya often took me to Pushkin Park, where she would meet with a young priest. My mother said I had curly hair and wore fashionable sailor suits then.
  
  Having the opportunity to move to a more prestigious area, my father chose the central part of Gogol Street, opposite the famous Cathedral and the Triumphal Arch built in honor of the Russian victory over Napoleon in 1812. It was a middle-class apartment with four bedrooms and a piano in one of them. Renting this apartment meant that my father had reached a certain level in his commercial enterprise. My mother always had a maid, and we lived happily until 1940, when the Soviets arrived in Bessarabia.
  
  Uncle David, my father's brother, also participated in the business of my grandfather Mendel, albeit to a lesser extent. Being a handsome young man, he loved to be surrounded by beautiful women. His future wife, Ester, was one of them. My uncle's fate turned out to be similar to the fate of my father - NKVD arrested them both. At the beginning of the war, uncle David was sent to Siberia to participate in the Zionist movement and for the so-called economic counter-revolution. After his post-war release, he settled in Lviv, Ukraine, where his family lived.
  
  Let me turn to the memories of uncle David's daughter Bima, who writes: 'Dad was arrested in 1941 by the NKVD for Zionist activities. According to him, he was an activist of Maccabi society. This Kishinev organization actively supported the repatriation of Jews to Israel, and dad was helping people moving to Palestine with fake documents. He served in Siberia (the Republic of Komi, the city of Solikamsk), chopping wood for more than 6 years. In the harsh conditions of survival, he suffered from severe frostbite on the legs, which affected his health for the rest of his life. He returned with no right to leave near the major cities, as people said, 'no closer than 101 kilometers (from Moscow). Ultimately, he was officially rehabilitated from all prior charges, but the certificate was issued years later. (An interesting coincidence: dad was released and died on Victory Day* (May 9th in Russia is WWII V-Day), although years apart.) '
  
  
  
  
  David Vaysman (left) and Lev Vaysman (right) with David's wife Ester and daughter Bima
  
  My father's younger brother, Kopel, was not repressed by the Soviets. However, his personal life has evolved dramatically. He was married three times. His first wife, Rosa, came from a wealthy family.
  
  
  
  Rosa (Rakhel) Merems and Kopel Vaysman, 28 July 1934, Kishinev
  
  Rosa and Kopel lived nearby, on Pavlovskaya Street. I remember a comfortable mansion with beautiful furniture. When the war began, Rosa was not able to flee Kishinev and ended up in the ghetto together with her little daughter Tanya, who was later brutally murdered by the Nazis.
  
  
  
  Tanya Vaysman before the War
  
  An elderly doctor working there helped Rosa to survive in the ghetto. After the war, Rosa became his wife out of a sense of duty, but they were soon repressed as unreliable survivors of the ghetto and exiled to Siberia. There, they had a boy who died in early childhood. After the war, I saw Aunt Rosa once when she visited my mother.
  
  As for uncle Kopel, he served in Iran at the time of the war, where the Soviet troops occupied the northern part of the country.
  Together with the British troops, they carried out a corridor of assistance under the Lend-Lease Policy. (The Lend-Lease policy, formally titled An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States, was an American program to defeat Germany, Japan, and Italy by distributing food, oil, and equipment between 1941 and August 1945.) Upon returning to Kishinev after the war, I remember him in an American leather coat. In 1944, Kopel found us in Northern Kazakhstan through the Buguruslan Agency.
  
  The Buguruslan Agency was an agency in the town of Buguruslan, in the Orenburg region of Russia. It helped people to find each other during and after World War Two.
  
  Moreover, he miraculously found the addresses of two other brothers serving terms in Siberia, and we, being in Northern Kazakhstan, received a letter from my father. Seemingly, fate provided so that one of the brothers stayed free to bring back together all the Vaysmans scattered all over the country in those terrible years.
  
  In peacetime, uncle Kopel worked at Zagotzerno (Bureau of Grain Procurement in the Soviet Union) together with my father. There, he met his second wife, Maria, with whom he lived on Pirogov Street. After Maria's death, uncle Kopel married for the third time. His third wife, Lea, had worked in the prestigious food shop on Lenin Street and supplied all the relatives with scarce groceries. Uncle Kopel also worked in a grocery store on the Kostyuzheny Highway.
  
  After Aunt Lea's death, uncle Kopel stayed alone. My cousin Galya, who lived nearby, was helping him with the housework. One time, nobody opened the door. His Gipsy neighbors broke the door and found uncle Kopel seated in an armchair near a TV still turned on. He was dead. His difficult life and lonely death deserve regret and sympathy.
  
  
  
  Kopel Vaysman after the war. Kishinev
  
  
  Not to finish on a sad note, let's remember that the Vaysman brothers loved football and, together with us, the kids, and even their wives, had not missed a single match at the Kishinev Stadium. My Uncle David and I rooted for Dynamo of Tbilisi, a Georgian team. My brother Fima's favorite was Dynamo of Moscow, and uncle Kopel preferred Spartak of Moscow. Altogether, they rooted for Burevestnik of Kishinev.
  
  
  
  
  Kopel Vaysman, Lev Vaysman, and David Vaysman
  
  
  Change of Government in Bessarabia
  
  In the summer of 1939, my father, Lev Vaysman, decided to take a vacation and brought me to the Romanian mountains of Carpaty for the first time. After an hour on a train, we arrived at the Pozharito station. I remember an empty platform early in the morning, the fresh scent of herbs and mountains, and rare local residents dressed in white clothes offering housing and fresh milk. Our host was Austrian. She fed us many dishes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I still see freshly baked sweets served with tea and diverse other stuff. Hiking in the mountains, we met my geography teacher, Mr. Chekir, who asked me about my summer homework.
  
  Every day we went to the railway station to buy a newspaper. On one occasion, I saw a train platform loaded with German tanks. I clearly remember a black swastika painted on a green background. The military train headed south, and my father decided to return home immediately. To my mother's surprise, we were back the next day. She met us at the door, holding my little brother Fima.
  
  I also remember another episode from 1940 when the Romanian newspaper was lying on my father's desk. It showed a vast printed portrait of a man with the inscription: 'The famed Russian revolutionary leader Lev Trotsky was killed in Mexico.' I also recall reading news about the war in Spain.
  
  On July 28th, 1940, we witnessed the entry of the Soviet troops into Kishinev. Most people came to this event as it was a celebration. We sat at the table on Alexander (later, Lenin) Street and watched how the Soviet tanks came from the east as the Romanian cavalry and infantry lived to the west. Not a single shot was heard.
  
  The so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was a neutrality pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed in Moscow on 23 August 1939. It had secret chapters where Bessarabia was given to the Soviet Union. At the same time, the Soviet Union annexed Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. Boys, including myself, climbed the tanks. Lovely Soviet soldiers, wearing black helmets, were giving us coins. Someone from the crowd was throwing flowers. However, the petty bourgeoisie, like my father, understood what this may lead to. In the evenings, a mobile cinema played the Soviet blockbuster 'Chapaev'. Sitting on the floor, the boys watched this fantastic movie with amusement. Later, I was fortunate to see the 'Three Tankmen ' and 'Battleship Potemkin'.
  
  
  
  'Battleship Potemkin' movie poster
  
  All of these occurred in the summer of 1940, and there was no hint of anything terrible yet. However, the Soviet power in Bessarabia was true to itself. Arrests and repressions had begun.
  Before the Soviets, my father worked for a grain processing company. The Soviets put him in a management position in the same type of business, Zagotzerno. He had been actively involved in the work, but all this suddenly stopped due to a false envious accusation by his former school friend. My father learned about it in Moscow, where he was brought after the arrest.
  
  As a side note, I would like to spend more time on my dad's life under Romanian authority. As Lev Vaysman had been climbing the hierarchical ladder in his business, he was also moving to more prestigious neighborhoods of the town. In 1940, we lived in the central part of Kishinev.
  
  
  Lev Vaysman (right) with his brother's (David's) family
  
  
  
  My father was an elected member of the stock exchange, giving him certain privileges: using sleigh rides in wintertime, watching movies in the 'Odeon' cinema from a personal balcony, etc. (Sleigh is a sled drawn by horses and used in winter.) I recall how the same movie would be played non-stop all day, and the people were guided to their seats with a flashlight.
  
  Here is an interesting episode in the cinema. I had just finished the 4th grade of primary school on the street of Stephan the Great across from Pushkin's Park and was enrolled in the first grade of the gymnasium of Mihai Eminescu, the famous Moldovan poet. The students of gymnasiums were forbidden from going to public places after 7 pm even if their parents were accompanying them. One day, my mom, ignoring the rule, took me to 'Odeon, ' where the movie 'Robinson Crusoe' was playing. We entered the hall accompanied by a controller's flashlight and, after watching one part of the film, shockingly discovered that my school Principal was sitting next to us. He looked at me and my mom, so she understood - tomorrow, she would have to visit the school for an apology.
  
  Now, let's go back to my father's fate. In the early spring of 1941, we heard a knock on the door. A strict male voice pronounced that they were our neighbors. When we opened the door, the first person who entered the room was indeed one of our neighbors who, as it turned out later, worked for the NKVD (The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs). Then, the people in uniform followed. They showed the search and arrest warrants. You can imagine my parents' anxiety at the moment, but we, the children, were little aware of what was going on.
  
  Our apartment was searched, and my father was taken away. The following day, my mother ran for help and advice to my uncle's wife, Esther, but it turned out her husband, David Vaysman, was arrested the same night.
  
  We brought parcels to the prison where Grigoriy Kotovskiy, a famous Soviet military leader and communist activist, was once held under the Tsar. (Coincidently, we lived across from that prison after the war.) Having lost my father's income, my mother started working from home making customer embroidery. We were strongly supported by my grandfather Mendel and uncle Kopel. There was only half a year left before the German invasion. All attempts to get any information about my father were failing. Only later, from his own words, we learned that after a few months in Kishinev prison, he was transferred to Moscow, where the trial was held. He was found guilty as an 'enemy of the people,' the infamous section 58 of the Soviet criminal law, and charged with economic counter-revolutionary activities. The charges caused a natural question on how he might have participated in counterrevolution activities while living in another country (before the Soviet occupation). The officials replied that he was robbing the peasants as a capitalist and also served as a Lieutenant of the Romanian army. My father refused to sign the indictment, but he was told about the possibility of torture (putting needles under his fingernails), and so he signed. I learned this terrible truth from my father, but my mother never knew the details. At Butyrskaya prison in Moscow, he accidentally saw his brother and realized David was facing a similar fate.
  
  Dad and Uncle David were sentenced to 8 years in Siberian camps. Dad was sent to Verkhoturye, where the temperatures dropped to minus 60 degrees Celsius (-76 F). At first, my father was a logger, the most challenging work in the camps, on equal terms with most prisoners. After the war began, the camp started to produce skis for the army. Considering his profession and leadership skills, the camp authorities put my father into an office position where he began to perform clerical work. The person in charge of the camp was very ferocious but a fair general. At the end of the fourth year, he called my father and said that he intended to save his life because he would not survive any longer due to poor health and inability to do hard physical labor. He sent him to the doctor. My father visited the doctor who gave him a silk thread with advice to smoke before the day when the Medical Commission was coming from Moscow. This annual commission was the only hope for an early release. The doctor warned that my father would feel strong heartbeats after smoking, but he had to bear it. Dad followed the advice and stood before the Commission of 5 medical doctors. One of them listened to the father's heart, spoke with the other doctors, and then my father was informed that his health no longer allowed him to stay in the camp, and he would be released.
  
  When I think about the miracles that accompanied our family during the five years of the war, it seems that a supernatural power had saved my father and uncle David. Who knows what could have happened if they had not been sent to Siberia? Because of the arrest and imprisonment, they, being Jews, evaded the Holocaust. On the other hand, many camp prisoners were shot to death during the war as potential traitors. It was mainly applied to the real criminals, while my father was ironically spared even though he was an 'enemy of the people.'
  
  In 1941, our family ran away from the coming Germans, and in 1944, we were living in a remote village of Vozvyshenskiy in Northern Kazakhstan. That year, my father sent us a telegram saying he would soon be released. My mother and other women had worked on a farm taking care of the cattle, milking cows, and bringing water from the well while I was helping her shovel grain, working as a motorist assistant, transporting gasoline on the bulls, etc. One day, after receiving the good news from my father, while working in the field with my mother, I saw a silhouette of a man descending to the village from the mountain and intuitively shouted, 'Dad is coming!' A few minutes later, my mom cried, 'Lev!' and I ran toward my father. Thus, after a long wait and uncertainty, we were together again.
  
  
  Gymnasium
  
  I studied in a gymnasium for one year. To get in, I had to pass a math exam and read aloud a poem by Mihai Eminescu, a prominent Romanian poet. The gymnasium was named after him, and his initials were engraved on our uniform hats. We also had to wear a personal number on the left shoulder, so I was number 47. My father paid for tuition, and I became a student.
  
  In Kishinev, there were many gymnasiums and lyceums (a type of secondary school) where boys and girls studied separately. Men's gymnasiums were usually named after poets (Bogdan Hasdeu, Alexander Donich) and women's after princesses (Princess Maria, Princess Dadiani). My cousins, Raya and Galya, with financial support from my father, entered General Bertelot's Gymnasium. All studies were conducted in French at this place.
  
  In Romanian schools, sloppiness and dirty clothing were not tolerated. Teachers fought for calligraphic handwriting and discipline. A streak on homework would result in punishment. Old corn cobs were on the floor in the corner of the classroom, where the students had to kneel when they disobeyed the rules. Moreover, the students would get lashed by a ruler on their knuckles as a punishment.
  
  Once, after checking the homework, my Romanian language teacher, Mr. Ursulesku, demanded to see the parents. My mother came, and he demonstrated a smudge on a homework paper. Then he gave her a new empty notebook and requested that I duplicate that assignment on each sheet as a punishment.
  
  My mother did not leave my side for several evenings, serving hot chocolate so I could stay awake and finish the task before the deadline. Finally, I brought the notebook to Mr. Ursulesku, who smiled happily at me.
  
  We were checked for clean necks, nails, and hands at the school doors every morning. We also were supposed to have two clean handkerchiefs.
  
  I remember how our first French class started: chubby men came, we all stood up, and Mr. Drew asked something in French. Most of the class was stunned, not knowing what was said, but those students who had been introduced to French by their governesses came to the rescue. From that moment on, everybody had to communicate with the French teacher, who did not know a word in Romanian. As a result, I learned French very quickly, and to this day, I can read an excerpt from Lafanten's 'The Crow and the Cheese' by heart. My father loved to buy me books, especially by Jules Verne, and I can probably hold a record of how many Verne novels I read. I also knew Russian well, and studying at school was easy.
  
  
  
  War and the Last Train from Kishinev
  
  On June 22, 1941, we woke up early in the morning from the glass cracking up of bombs on the Boulevard. I remember low-flying German aircraft with black crosses on the fuselage edges, giving off a wild, breathtaking buzz. Many black dots of bombs were scattered down the aircraft. Terrified, I called out to my grandmother: 'Pray to God!'
  
  Because the most significant impact of the German troops fell on Minsk and Leningrad, and there had been no breakthroughs on the southern front, we survived in Kishinev until July 16, 1941. During this period, my mother managed to obtain a certificate for evacuation. To get this certificate, we stood in long lines while hiding from bombing in trenches on the territory of my school.
  
  We often stayed with my grandfather near the Vesternicheny rail station. The missile shots were visible in the night sky, and lonely German planes followed them. During one night's attack, Grandpa Mendel came out in his white nightclothes. Granny Heyved shouted: 'What are you doing? They will see you!'
  
  On July 16, we stayed with his family in uncle David's basement. The explosions have shaken the city. Kishinev was burning; the Soviets blew up everything that they could. We woke up early in the morning from knocking on the basement door, and I heard Grandma Heyved screaming insanely: 'Why are you sleeping? City burns! Everybody runs on the station's last passenger train! Go now! Run to the station!'
  
  We would have to leave the city or await our fate in darkness. My mother, wanting to save the children, did not hesitate, so we grabbed the bags prepared in advance with everything that could be carried. The postal stamps collection was very special to me, and I kept it in my jacket pocket.
  
  My mother, Anna, my 6-year-old brother, Fima, grandmother Tseytl, and I ran to the station to catch the last train to leave the crowded platform. There was a soldier with a machine gun blocking the way. My mother begged: 'I have kids! ' but the soldier was immovable. At the very last moment, a Lieutenant appeared in the train doorway. It was my school principal. 'What are you doing here, Vaysman? ' - He asked. My mom answered for me: 'We have evacuation papers and want to leave, but the soldier is not letting us.' Then we heard the command: 'Let them in!' The soldier stepped back, and we were on the train.
  
  Grandpa Mendel and grandma Heyved also came to the station but refused to leave Kishinev, like many others who believed nothing terrible would happen upon the Germans' arrival.
  
  I remember meeting my cousins and other relatives on that Salvation train. German and Romanian military troops soon invaded the city. All those who did not have time to escape or decided to stay ended up in the ghetto. Almost none of them survived.
  
  Later, my grandmother Heyved, who joined us in the evacuation, told me it was impossible to stay in Kishinev any longer. The city was in flames, and people started walking away to the east. She and my grandfather were amongst them, even though they hoped the war would end soon and they would return. In the rush, grandpa thought of his tallis (a fringed garment traditionally worn by religious Jews) forgotten at home. He requested his wife to keep going and returned to the house, intending to catch up with her as soon as possible. They never saw each other again. We heard that Mendel Vaysman was last seen begging on the streets in Odessa. He disappeared without a trace, and all attempts to find him during and after the war failed. Finally, our train slowly exited the burning city. Soldiers blew up telegraph poles and railway tracks after we passed them. Slowly moving, the train passed Bendery, Tiraspol, and safely arrived at Odesa.
  
  We could not stop thinking about what had happened to the grandparents' and uncles' families. We did not know if they had managed to evacuate because only we possessed the evacuation documents. In Odessa, we were ordered to leave the train and travel further to the East by ourselves since Odessa was overwhelmed with chaos and confusion.
  
  Our family and others climbed an open railway wagon covered with a tarp. To our surprise, this train moved very quickly. Enemy aircraft circled the sky, but Soviet planes had not been seen. We had considered ourselves rescued, but soldiers who guarded the shipment notified us that wagons transport the bomb, and if the aircraft found us and shot, we would be killed.
  
  I should say that we did not feel any fear yet because we did not yet know what death in the war meant. On this dangerous train, we, stored by fate, arrived at Voznesensk, bought tickets for a passenger train in which we passed the whole of southern Ukraine, Kryvyi Rih, Zaporizhzhia, and finally arrived at Bataysk, where the officials took us off the train as refugees and fed for the first time.
  
  I remember the Ukrainian people who delivered food to the train, and it seemed to me that the war would last a few weeks, the revolution would take place in Germany, and we would return unharmed to Kishinev. I was literate well enough for my years, so I could read the newspapers and understand that the Germans were moving to the East, that they had already taken Kishinev, Odesa, Lviv, and Minsk, and that we had to flee. It also played a role in our salvation, as many evacuees settled in different places, not wanting to move anywhere anymore because they believed in a quick end to the war.
  
  After Bataysk, we were transferred to Proletarsk, the southern district of the Rostov region. We temporarily settled on the Budeniy farm. The farm was standing near the river Manych. Don Cossacks, who lived there, were friendly to us. My mother went to work on the farm. My brother Fima was admitted to kindergarten. I was supposed to go to the elementary or middle school, but instead, I was sent to kindergarten as well, solely for bread distributed to the pupils. Somehow, we met my cousins and Grandma Heyved there, who also joined a group of evacuees.
  
  In 'Budeniy,' we lived pretty well: we were fed, it was summer, and it was warm. However, one night, when the situation on the front deteriorated, as I knew from newspapers, somebody knocked on the door, and a terrible voice requested the location of the farm head person, adding, 'Or else, I will shoot!' We thought it was saboteurs, and aunt Chana (I think she was one of the relatives) cried, 'Lie down on the floor!' She shouted that we knew nothing, and even though those intruders did not do any harm, we lay on the floor for a long time and could not recover from fear.
  
  After that incident, the women decided to leave despite the seeming prosperity. We did not know where to go because the authorities were no longer interested in our future. The only railway branch from Proletarsk went northeast towards Stalingrad. My mother confidently changed one of my father's suits for the bag of bread. We grabbed a bag of onions and bread because there was nothing else to catch in the house. Then my mother hired a man, and he drove us to the Proletarsk rail station, where other evacuees and we occupied the railway platforms at night and made fire with coal for warmth there. By then, we ran out of money and used items from the wardrobe as money equivalents.
  
  We placed our Grandmothers in the passageway; boys were sitting right on the coal - messy and dirty. So, with the help of God, once again rescued, we moved to Stalingrad. The train was traveling with long stops; we had coal, ignited small fires, and women cooked soup. At the Kotelnikovo station, we had to leave the train because it was the last stop. We slept on park benches and ran out of bread and onions.
  
  Being the eldest among the boys, I walked them onto the platform where the steady stream of the Stalingrad military echelons ran to the front. It was the end of the autumn of 1941. I knew from the books what an armored train looked like and unmistakably recognized it when it drove to the station. Unexpectedly, the military person, whose face seemed familiar, came out of that train. We got closer, and I heard: 'Vaysman, is that you?' You can imagine my surprise when I learned that the Senior Lieutenant was Giorgiy Zacharovich, the principal of my school! I explained that we were stuck in Kotelnikovo, not knowing what to do, that my mother was changing things for food, and that we lived in the park. He asked whether we had bread or money. After receiving a negative reply, G.Z. disappeared on the train and, a minute later, popped out with two loaves of bread and 30 rubles in a single bill. Giving those to me, he said: 'This is all I can provide. Tell your mother to evacuate immediately'. As I realized later, it was a time when the Germans marched on Stalingrad, somewhere between the Don and Volga rivers.
  Soon, the cold season came. We were recruited to build defenses in Abganerovo, 100 km south of Stalingrad. The pay, food, and warm clothes were promised. I remembered a warm, cozy room where we stayed. Every morning, mom and I went to dig trenches. It was not a tall trench but an anti-tank ditch shuffled by a machine, and our task was to take the soil out. I remember many people brought from Stalingrad, mostly Soviet academics, in hats and berets, dressed as townspeople, mostly older men and very young women. The Focke-Wolves buzzed above us but did not drop bombs. It was military photography.
  
  Shortly after the work was finished, the winter came, and we moved to a cheaper apartment. Money and food were gone. I recall sitting in a barn at night, hungry, looking for a single wheat grain on the floor. Understanding that this would not last long, a group of evacuees had asked the authorities who had proposed moving for winter to Kalmyk farm Tibitkinerovo for a possible job. For a while, we forgot about the war because the main thing now was to survive. The two grandmothers, kids, and our remaining belongings were on a horse sled. My mother walked. The cold was terrible, and a blizzard started. Soon, I lost sight of the women behind us, including my mom. We had a warm piece of fabric that mom bought to sew a coat for my father. Looking at my grandmother Heyved, who was lightly dressed, I tried to cover her with that fabric, but she looked at my little brother and said: 'Make him and yourself warm. I will be fine'. Granny Heyved passed away in front of my eyes, but I was unaware of this until we arrived at the village, and the men who met us told me about it. We unloaded the carriage, and my grandmother was taken somewhere. After a while, my mom came. I do not know who buried Grandma and where the place is.
  
  There were no jobs in the village. We all stayed in one room. There was only one man among us, an elderly shoemaker whose entire wealth was a bag of wooden shoe pads. Our room had an iron furnace with a chimney, but there was no wood or coal to warm us in the season's chilling condition. The desperate woman asked the shoemaker to burn his pads. An older man stood on his knees and begged not to do that, but we had no choice. His pads kept us from freezing for several days. When it became unbearable, we returned to Abganerovo to go further toward Stalingrad.
  
  By that time, we ran out of food one more time. While walking on the railway station platform, I fainted and standing nearby, soldiers brought me to the waiting room. My mother took some of our diminishing belongings, went out, and later returned with bread. She cut the loaf and gave a piece to each of us. However, grandmother Tseytl, thinking she would not survive anyway, refused to eat and said: 'I'm not hungry. Give this to the children'. Shortly after that, she quietly and unnoticeably went to another world. Only many years later, thinking of this episode, I realize that she and grandmother Heyved sacrificed themselves so that we, the children, stayed alive. When I asked my mother how she buried my grandmother, she said that she recruited two young boys for the last item of clothes, and they drove her on a sled and buried her at night.
  
  I admire the courage and sacrifice of our family's women. Let them rest in peace, but they will always stay in my heart.
  
  We were advancing to the Northeast. The Abganerovo platform was full of people. We were waiting for the occasional passenger train 'Rostov-Stalingrad'. With unbelievable courage, my mother got tickets and convinced strangers to put us on a train that stayed at the station for only three minutes. I remember how we raised Fima above the heads of the other passengers, how my mother pushed herself through, and how I climbed up by myself. I had a bag with shoes in my hands. After finding each other on the train, we breathed a sigh of relief and were ready for yet another unknown.
  
  In Stalingrad, I jumped off the train first, dropped my bag on the ground, and turned to my mom, to help with Fima. While I was busy, someone stole our bag with our precious winter footwear.
  
  At the station, which later will be remembered as one of the last strongholds of the Stalingrad defenders, was an agency for evacuees. Mom showed our already turned-in-to-pieces evacuation certificate, and we were given food stamps several days ahead and directions to the hospital that was located in the school. It was the end of 1941. The Germans were advancing. Putting aside the assault on Moscow, they were shooting for the Caucasus and Baku oil. General Paulus' army moved on the Stalingrad and Volga river, wanting to cut the resource supply of central Russia.
  
  I want to add my cousin Bima's story about evacuation: 'All mama's and grandfather Genrikh Brokhman's families perished in the Kishinev ghetto. We fled burning Kishinev on a train and ended up in Karaganda (at Krasnaya Neva), where temperatures dropped below minus forty degrees Celsius. I was going to the first grade, and the burden of our life lay on my mother's shoulders. There were such storms that we, the children, had to be tied to a rope not to be lost'.
  
  
  
  
  Life in Stalingrad
  
  Life in Stalingrad was a paradise for us because we were fed and had a place to shower. My friends and I spent time in the local school checking the exhibits and library and reading books in the empty classrooms at night. Stalingrad is located on the hills, and when we were taken to a public bath, a miserable bus could barely climb uphill, and I felt it would break loose and crash. A small hill grew in my imagination into a vast mountain.
  
  When my mother was admitted with typhus to a hospital, Dr. Landa suggested to her to start worrying about herself, not the children. Her beautiful curly hair was shaved. In the moments of returning from the state of typhoid delirium, she waved at us from the hospital window. One day, my brother Fima fell ill with dysentery and was admitted to a general hospital. Later, he was transferred to the children's ward due to a complication with his kidneys. I was left alone.
  
  At the beginning of 1942, authorities began to move refugees to the left bank of the Volga River (the former Republic of the ethnic Germans in the Volga region). These territories were not in use, as the ethnic Germans were evicted to Siberia and Central Asia at the beginning of the war. I was about to be sent there with other refugees despite my desire to stay with my mom and brother. However, Dr. Landa was on my side. He sent me to the hospital ward, where my brother and I slept on one bed until our mother was able to take care of us. This 'Solomon decision' of a stranger saved me from family separation and, very likely, saved my life.
  
  During our hospital stay, several children from blockaded Leningrad were admitted to our ward.
  
  (The Siege of Leningrad (also known as the Leningrad Blockade, was a prolonged military blockade of Nazi Germany against the Russian city of Leningrad during WW2. It lasted 872 days after it began.)
  
  Even now, being a doctor and seeing many malnourished children, especially in the early years of work, I cannot describe those unfortunate kids who had only skin, bones, and deep-set dark eyes. I still remember the horrifying picture of one Leningrad man I will never forget. He looked exactly like those miserable kids. He pulled a bunch of money from his pocket and asked a nurse to buy a chicken and cook him soup. Most likely, he knew that he was dying and wanted to die well-fed. After a few hours at night, violating the doctor's order, the nurse came with a pot. She invited the poor man from the adult ward and offered him a meal. He had not even eaten a half when he fell on his side and died right in front of me. This scene is still in my mind, and I see it as one of the worst episodes of my Stalingrad life because it was a moment when I discovered what death was.
  
  My mother recovered, and after a few months, in the spring of 1942, the officials moved us to the city of Pallasovka, on the left bank of the Volga River. We were brought to stay in a house with no glass on the windows. It was impossible to survive in such a condition in the area of severe winds and sand storms, and the authorities moved us farther. In addition, the Germans were already in Stalingrad, and we could not stay in the frontline area. So, we were put in cattle cars (wagons for livestock). We slowly moved through Orenburg, Chelyabinsk, and further to North Kazakhstan.
  
  In Petropavlovsk, we were on a passenger train to Bulaevo and brought to Vozvishenskiy Kolkhoz (collective farm) along with a few families from Kishinev. We were taken to a remote village, where we spent the next two years until my father's arrival. I befriended a girl named Rosa when our families were placed to stay together. Mom worked various jobs: brought water for the farm animals from a remote well, worked at a grain field with other women at the field mill, milked cows, nursed the bulls, and I tried to help her around.
  
  There was an elementary school in the village, so Rosa and I were admitted to the fourth grade, mainly because we were entitled to a portion of bread and some sugar.
  
  I would like to tell an episode that once again was a miracle in the name of my salvation. In May, when not all the snow had melted, I and other kids brought hay on bulls for the livestock. After riding a long distance from the farm, we loaded hay on the sled and returned. I was going on the last sled because the local children got the priority. Suddenly, out of the blue, an enormous storm began. Everything started to spin, move, and fly around, and we got lost, not knowing the direction. I hid in the hay, waiting for the decision of the older children. I was not scared; it was so cold that I only thought about how to warm myself. After a quick chat, local children put the oldest bulls before the entire procession. The storm continued as if by demonic powers. Its strength was unusually severe, even for Siberia. I fell asleep and woke up when the sled entered the farm. The old bulls that found the way saved six children despite the cruel storm. Not everyone was as lucky as us. Later, I learned that a part of the farm herd and the shepherds got lost and drowned in a lake.
  
  My mother had to bring a barrel of water to the farm every morning. The water sled could not be left in the cold because water could freeze and break the barrel. However, what could we, the city dwellers, understand about this rural business? One freezing evening, we went to get water. The horse was breathing heavily, and icicles were hanging from its nostrils. After filling the barrel with water, we needed to return immediately, but the horse began to get nervous, pounding hooves and not moving. There was an awful silence around for a moment. Suddenly, we heard a howl, and I saw bright lights in the dark. We recognized the presence of wolves. My mother decided to go back to the farm. We had to save the horse and ourselves, so we left the sled with the barrel alone, taking it by its bridle. The foreman, seeing us back without water, asked about the barrel. My mother explained the situation with wolves, emphasizing that we rescued the frightened horse, but the foreman screamed back that he had no water for the cows. He requested us to turn back before the barrel froze solid. Fortunately, the wolves were gone, as was our fear. This time, we did not rely on the horse but instead pushed the sled ourselves to return as fast as possible. By the way, this was the only water barrel on the farm.
  
  As I said before, all our winter footwear was stolen in Stalingrad. In summer, I walked barefooted, but in fall, when we were taking care of the grain, the snow suddenly kicked in, and to warm up my feet, I dipped them into the grain. Then I ran home crying and telling my mother that I could no longer go to work without shoes. My mother went to farm officials. The head of the farm was an exiled Trotskyist (persecuted for belonging to an ultra-left political ideology). He politely explained that there were no shoes and the only thing he could help with was to give us some 'syromyatina' (raw leather) from which, if adequately tailored, we could make the so-called 'onuchy' or 'postoly' (kinds of primitive native shoes). My mother came home with a roll of syromyatina, and our neighbors sewed a resemblance of shoes for the children.
  
  There was a tiny yard in the back of our place where we planted potatoes, our only available food. Before going to work, we cooked a bucket of potatoes to be eaten during the day. When the harvest season arrived, my mother and I were assigned to clean the grain from impurities. There, I drew my attention to women stealing the grain, hiding it in their pants. Noticing my mother's surprise, one of the women asked why she was not wearing pants. The next day, my mother came on her duty in dad's pants tucked into the stockings. Stalin's regime imprisoned those who hid grain from the government, but our desire to live and the necessity to feed the children were above the harsh law, and my mother took the risk without hesitation. Our host woman gave us a tool to grind the grain, and, sitting on the floor with my brother Fima, we were steering the little 'mill' together.
  
  Thus, we had some flour and grain grout, and we could make soup, 'kasha' (hot cereal), and pancakes despite the shortage of salt and sugar. It was the third year of the war.
  
  
  Back from the Prison Camp
  
  Let me remind you that in 1944, we received a letter from my father informing us about his early release. Thanks to the efforts of his brother Kopel, he found us in our evacuation place. Suddenly appearing in our lives and seeing our poverty, the next day, dad went to sovkhoz (farm) management and, after talking with the director, who was an exile himself, was hired as deputy director of the oil and lubricants division.
  
  Some Polish exiles sent to Kazakhstan in 1939 lived in the same area. They were young and strong guys who signed up for the army of a Polish general, Anders. Not wanting to fight on the Soviet front, Anders organized his army to operate in the Middle East and North Africa in cooperation with the British forces. (The Polish Government in Exile was located in Great Britain.)
  
  So, we moved into the central sovkhoz. I went to the eighth grade and Fima - into the second grade, but there was neither paper nor ink. Mom made ink from coal and ashes, and we wrote on newspapers between the lines. We were practically naked, and mom was wearing her last dress. And then, dad came up with an adventurous proposition tipped by the Poles. Going into the town for fuel, he managed to sell a petroleum tank. He bought a bag of flour, potatoes, clothing, shoes, paper, and other necessary goods with that money. Moreover, on the advice of those Poles, dad bought a lean cow, but we, the urban people, could not take care of it and decided to sell the poor animal. For that, we had to travel to the town. Mom hired a carriage. We traveled one day and night to reach the marketplace where the cow was sold. Those risky projects of my father were an act of desperation and could end badly. Being on early parole, he was required to check in with the police periodically. It was a miracle that his illegal activities went unnoticed.
  
  A few months later, dad was summoned to the Chief of Police, who tried to recruit him as an informant among the evacuees. My father couldn't agree to comply, so he asked for one day to decide. With that, he went to the Poles. They suggested two options to him. My father could sign up as a volunteer in the Polish Army and go to Palestine. Or, he could sign up with the Red Army. He would have to travel to Semipalatinsk and report to Major Stromberg, who was forming a reserve tank regiment. Not thinking twice, my father left for Semipalatinsk, telling us he was going on a business trip. A few days later, we got a letter from him with a photograph of him in the uniform of a junior sergeant. There was also an instruction to go to the police with this letter. Having received this letter from a 'prospective informant, ' Vaysman, the police chief, angrily said: 'Well, a sneaky Jew always finds his way out.' It was yet another miraculous exit from a critical situation.
  
  In 1944, Stalin started to resettle the Caucasian population, Chechens, Ingushes, Kalmyks, Crimean Tatars, Greeks, Bulgarians, Turks, and other 'not trustworthy' peoples, to Central Asia and Siberia. One winter day, we witnessed a terrible sight: Chechens were brought to our area, and most of them were women and children. Soldiers threw them on the snow. I even remember that some of the unfortunate walked barefoot. Our moms took in a family that later was sent to a remote village. Two new teachers from the Caucasus, a history teacher and a teacher of literature, appeared in the school. Then, in a few months, they disappeared as suddenly as they came. I think they were accused of arson in the house of a party official.
  
  Another scary case happened on the central farm where two dentists from Kishinev, a brother and a sister, lived. Local robbers killed them for money.
  
  On the farm, we lived with the other 12-15 years-old boys. We all worked because all the men went to war. I changed several occupations: an assistant to a tractor driver, a fuel carrier, and a shepherd. Once at night, I went to the farm field with a tractor plow. It was an area of virgin soil that agriculture had not touched earlier. An American tractor, 'Caterpillar, ' had to be started manually by turning a metal handle. The tractor driver told me to turn the handle, but I could not move a millimeter. Then, he put me on the plow. My duty was to clean the plow from dirt with a heavy-lifting lever, but I had difficulty moving it even with both hands. We made a half-circle on the field, and the tractor driver, seeing that I was falling asleep and afraid that I would fall under the plow, told me to lie down in the field and wait for his return. I remember that I instantly fell asleep. The tractor driver, completing one circle, nearly crushed me. He forgot that I was sleeping there.
  
  But let's go back to the story about my father. After serving in the army in 1945, a few months before the victory, dad did not come back to the farm because of the dreaded NKVD and went to Kishinev, where his younger brother Kopel already returned. In Kishinev, he returned to his former position at Zagotzerno under the command of the same comrade Cherniavsky and immediately sent us a letter to return. Upon Victory Day, we, joyful for the first time, together with other evacuees from Moldova, went back by train. It was the summer of 1945.
  
  Return to Kishinev
  
  The train was overloaded with the evacuees. To get a comfortable seat, we had to storm the train car. My mother and Fima climbed first, and then I joined them. A young woman was next to me in the car, and I cared for her. I believe I fell in love with her. She answered me back. I don't remember her name or face, but later, when I became a doctor, traveling between Kishinev and Ungeny, during the brief stop at the Sipoteni station, I was looking for her. At one of the Ural stations, we separated from the authorities accompanying us from the beginning of the trip. Now, feeling some freedom, we decided to go to Moscow as the only way to Kishinev. One early morning, our train came to the 'Moskva-Tovarnaya' station. I was the eldest among the boys, and I got the idea to show Moscow to the others. We went to the nearest metro (subway) station without moms' approval. We enjoyed the colorful ornaments of the walls and the underground architecture unseen before. After Kazakhstan, Moscow seemed like a paradise on Earth.
  
  Suddenly, someone grabbed me by the shoulder at one station, and we all ended up at a police station. We were perceived as pickpocket thieves based on our old and dirty clothes. The policeman tried to communicate with us using gang slang. We were puzzled by the slang, and he erupted swearing. Among other things, I heard a hint of my Jewish nationality. We got into a very nasty situation, threatened by arrest and separation from our mothers. But then, a senior officer checked our train record by phone, and we were released. Fortunately, we returned without a significant delay, and the train left Moscow after some time. One fine summer day, after five years of absence, we, vibrant and joyful, were met by uncle Kopel and my dad at the Kishinev central station. I quickly forgot the woman from the train and did not even care to ask how to find her later because I was so happy to be back home. We went to uncle Kopel, and a few days later, dad got an apartment at Kuznechnaya Street (corner of Benderskaya), across from the prison tower where he was locked by the Soviets in 1940. We could see the tower from our window but never talked about bad times.
  
  School #3
  
  After returning to Kishinev, I started the 9th grade in school #3, named after the Russian writer Maxim Gorkiy. The school was located just a minute's walk from our house. Next to the school, across Kostyuzheny Street, my second cousin Salya Mereshenskiy lived. My friends Grisha Berman and Syunya Zaydman liked to come to her place for lunch. Across from us, on Kuznechnaya Street, another friend, Lyuda Shpilevaya, lived. She was the prettiest girl of all six schools in the area.
  
  Nearby, the future scientific elite of Kishinev studied: Professor Vitya Kovarskiy, Professor of Oncology Zorik Zisman, a leading expert on the physiology of hearing Professor Yasha Altman, Karmazin who later became the husband of my classmate Nelya Yankelevich, as well as my friend Yasha Frenklah who graduated from the Moscow Power Engineering Institute. The fate of the first Yasha was tragic. After graduating, already a doctor, he drowned in the Ural River while rescuing his sister. Amongst my other friends, there were Abrasha Paromschik and Volodya Kalnitskiy (nicknamed Manus), who studied in the Moldavian school #1 and graduated from the Pedagogical Institute, Ika Goldshteyn whom I met many years later in New York.
  
  I remember the girls from school #6: Toliana Tintulov (who later became my first wife), Marta Troitskiy, and Yulya Kletinich. (Vova Berginer from Railway School was in love with Yulya. He was a head shorter than her, wore shoes on double soles, and visited Julia on a motorcycle. Eventually, she became his wife. Vova was to become a famous neurologist.) Among the girls at school #6, Brigita Ornshteyn stood out. She and Nelya Yankelevich received gold medals for excellence when they graduated. Brigita became Vitya Kovarskiy's wife. She wrote many books on Physics and Needlework. From school #2, I recall Ezya Sheinfeld, to whom I dedicated my first poem.
  
  
  
  Yuliy Vaysman in the 10th grade
  
  Once, I played the older man in a school play. I glued a beard and mustache to my face, but both pieces fell on the floor when I appeared on the stage. Then, there were dances. I invited Julia, a girl from my neighborhood. I was in love with her before the war. We lived on the same Gogol Street.
  
  In the 10th grade, the son of the Head of the Moldovan Communist Party, Dima Koval, was studying with me. He was in love with Larisa Kamishova from school #6. At that time, we met with the girls of the elite classes: a daughter of the Chief of Zagotzerno Tyunyaeva and one more, a daughter of a general. We spend days and nights in their houses before entering universities. We also gathered near Isya, nicknamed Violin. He lived on Benderskaya Street. Not far from Isya, another buddy of mine lived, Rufka Dorfman. When we were hanging out at our house, mom and dad went to the cinema so we could enjoy the freedom. My average grade in school was C, rarely B. I knew the history and geography but wrote Russian with spelling errors. The teachers supported me, realizing that the student missed the seventh grade and one-quarter of the ninth, unable to catch up with his talented classmates. Seeing my difficulty with math, my parents hired a tutor teacher at our school, the famous Vasiliy Veter. He lived at the school and was a real Russian intellectual who spoke nicely. We acted as his disciples, often going to him to listen to life stories. Moreover, he was a gifted painter and read lectures on art to us.
  
  I still remember the teacher of literature, Aleksandra Razumniy. On my final test, she was not sure how to rate my essay 'All Roads Lead to Moscow, 'where I used a turnover 'caravans of people' by analogy with the 'caravans of camels. '
  
  
  Teachers of School #3 (1960)
  
  Unfortunately, many of my friends have passed away now. Eternal memory to them!
  
  Admission to the Medical School
  
  When the time came to consider further education, everyone was confused. It was a year of hunger, and I decided not to leave home like some friends who went to Moscow or Leningrad. Mom wanted me to go to medical school because we did not have a doctor in the family. I wanted to be a filmmaker (obviously influenced by the shots during WWII movies).
  
  Many students from schools #3 and #6 ran to submit their papers to the medical school. The Second Leningrad Medical School moved to Kishinev after the war. During the war, school ended up under the nazi occupation and, thus, lost the government's trust. Therefore, the Leningrad school was moved from Leningrad to Kishinev and started to operate in 1945. Other higher education institutions also resumed accepting new students around that time. So, my friends-mathematicians Grisha Berman and Syunya Zaydman were admitted into the University, Volodya Kalnitskiy went to the Pedagogical Institute, where the study was held in the Moldovan language.
  
  My idea to conquer cinema did not work, as I quickly gave in to my mother and began to prepare for the medical school exams. I scored 18 out of 20 points on the entrance exams and was admitted.
  
  The first exam was in literature. We had to write an essay. I chose the topic of 'We are peaceful people, but our armored train is ready. ' Guided by the war impressions, I easily coped with the subject, but the essay would probably get an F because of the numerous grammatical errors. My dad was frantically searching for ways to overcome this obstacle. He remembered that a man whom I gave an essay, Sergei Smirnov, taught Latin in his grammar school. Smirnov's wife worked with my father at Zagotzerno. She promised to help. Sergei Smirnov handed a clean piece of paper back to my father. I rewrote the essay without errors and received an 'A' for the composition's style and grammar.
  
  The following exam was in chemistry. Coincidentally, another coworker of my father lived in the neighborhood with the chemistry teacher. So, I got a 'B'. However, on the physics exam, my father exhausted the stock of his contacts. I was sure I would fail the test without help from my friends, mathematics professor Grisha and Syunya. The day was hot. My friends sat under the widely opened exam room window. Lev Landa, who later became the husband of my second cousin, Salya, was my examiner. As I expected, I was unable to keep up with the questions. So, I threw a crumpled piece of paper out the window with the prerequisite problem description. Landa, apparently trying to help me, left the room several times, asking each time: 'Well, Vaysman, are you ready yet?' Finally, I got back the solution from my friends and got a 'B,' scoring 18 points as was necessary. I was enrolled in medical school!
  
  No one of the boys from School #3 and girls from School #2 and #6 failed the entrance exams. After the war, there was a shortage of youngsters who could fill the study rooms, so the admission rules were relaxed.
  
  
  Medical School
  
  There were 280 students admitted to the school that year. Among them were people of more than 10 nationalities, with the majority being Jewish/Moldovan/Russian.
  
  
  My school friends: Sasha Brezhko (left), Sasha Kotlyar, Zyunya Grinberg
  
  In the future, our school graduates will become the elite of Moldovan and Soviet medicine. We studied with fun and enthusiasm, although the times were harsh, and people went hungry. Guys from the dorms, who came to study in Kishinev from remote places, worked at night unloading railcars on the railroad, being nurses in the hospitals, and somehow surviving. It was easier for those like me who lived with their parents. We, in turn, helped the poor students earn some money by spending hours in line for movie tickets, buying those tickets, and then selling them for higher prices to those who did not wish to stand in line. The school was far from my house, on Skulyanskaya Rogatka, and we stormed the only trolley bus that ran on Lenin Street. Since I did not have the patience to wait for the trolley bus, I walked, making my way through the alleys and backyards to shorten the path and reach the place on time. The school auditorium was big, but I always sat among the girls in the front row and recorded the lectures word-to-word. Famous professors taught us. One of the lecturers was Associate Professor Sheynfayn, an imposing man with a long beard, a womanizer, and later a victim of the Soviet authorities. Usually, he would come to the classroom waving his cane.
  
  
  
  Yuliy Vaysman - 1 year of Medical School
  
  It took me three tries to pass an anatomy test. The first time, I tried to pass with Professor Lavrentev, an honored science figure in the USSR. I searched in vain for help from his assistant teacher Makarova, who unsuccessfully tried to show me the location of the Lisfranc joint on the human body. I was looking for it in the chest area while it was on the foot. Realizing that I could not answer two of the three questions, Professor Lavrentev returned my grade book to me and said, 'Come back in a week. ' I went home to study the anatomical atlas. Mom served me hot chocolate so that I would not fall asleep. A week later, I went to retake the test. This time, it was Professor Sheinfayn whom we called 'Beard. ' I managed to answer two out of three questions this time. Smiling, 'Beard, ' said, 'Let's meet in a week. ' In due time, now knowing almost all of the anatomy by heart, I proudly and confidently entered the anatomical theater, feeling like a winner. Professor Boris Perlin asked, 'Well, Vaysman, have you learned Anatomy yet?' I firmly replied, 'Yes!'and was ready to answer the questions. But, no wonder this professor was the favorite teacher on the faculty. Before I could open my mouth, he handed me the grade book with the 'B' and said, 'Now we know you have learned everything. ' Much later, in New York, at the fiftieth reunion of our graduates, we remembered Professor Boris Perlin and even ran a little fundraiser for his gravestone in Kishinev. The first two years of medical school were tough. I hated Chemistry. Physics, Anatomy, and Latin were complex for me. However, in the third year, I, with my friend Sasha Kotlyar, who later became a professor of physiotherapy in Moscow, pledged to improve our grades and, to our surprise, passed the most difficult subjects of this year, Pharmacology and Pathology Anatomy, with the 'A. '
  
  For three years, I studied with my future wife, Toliana Tintulova, who was originally the girlfriend of my buddy Maryasis. Unfortunately, Toliana went ill and took a break from her studies. Later, on the advice of doctors, she left the school. I continued getting good grades and passed the Internal Medicine exam with Professor Starastenko, who had the only car ('Moskvich') in the entire faculty. Once, at a lecture on gastric ulcers, he emphasized the importance of regular eating. Considering the post-war condition, someone from the audience asked, 'So, what if there is nothing to eat?' The professor replied, 'Then chew an iron nail. '
  
  I remember the Professor of Psychiatry Molohov introduced us to one of his patients, Prince Mirsky, who 'invented a bird language' and wrote many books on it. Mirsky lived in Kostyuzheny psychiatric hospital but studied at Bucharest and Sorbonne universities in his youth. He also served in the military. The hospital was built by a wealthy landowner for their sick children, Kostya and Zhenya, hence the hospital's name. Two incidents come to mind: the surgery exam in the third year of school and the neurology exam in the fifth year. Professor Lvov, who wore huge sunglasses, believed that all students of our school were required to subscribe to the multi-volume edition of 'The Experience of Soviet Medicine in WWII. 'I studied the General Surgery course with my friend Zyunya from Faleshty for two days and two nights. I read, and Zyunya snored or periodically hummed the melody of 'Tiko-Tiko, ' learned from a Brazilian movie. Among other things, we paged through a volume of 'Experience of Soviet Medicine, ' where my eyes caught pictures of bronchopulmonary fistulas. With my good visual memory, I easily remembered those images. I usually entered the exam room among the first students. Seeing that I only had a vague knowledge of the subject, Professor Lvov looked at me through his glasses, and I knew I was supposed to get an 'F' for the grade. Grasping at straws, I told him I read additional literature about fistulas. The professor was surprised, and I quickly sketched a diagram and got a 'B' for my bravery, not giving him time to recover. Most interestingly, Zyunya, who was going next and even less prepared than I, survived using the same trick. He told the professor that we had read an article about bronchopulmonary fistulas and had even demonstrated the diagram I had managed to pass him.
  
  At the Department of Neurological Diseases, headed by Professor Sharapov, it was believed that students could not learn this most complex science, so a lottery occurred before the exams. Each student would get one ticket with questions to be answered by heart. Professor Sharapov had a special rule: the girls had to cover their legs, and the boys had to wear ties. He considered it disrespectful to him and his subject if one did not obey such attire rules. As usual, I appeared first in the exam room in the spring test season. I was not wearing a tie, for which Professor Sharapov immediately commented. Perhaps I was unaware of his rules or left my tie home because of the hot weather. I knew the exam material modestly, and what also helped me was a small talk we had about Tchaikovsky's ballets. As a music connoisseur, I knew the ballets much better than neurology. Receiving 'B,' I jumped out of the auditorium and shouted to the boys to immediately run outside and borrow someone's tie.
  
  
  
  Yuliy Vaysman and his cousin Bima on the ship 'Russia' (a former trophy German ship 'Patria'), Odessa, 1950
  
  After graduation, I was appointed to the Tiraspol District, the village of Karmanovo, but because of missed deadlines, my place in the hospital was taken by somebody else. Skipping any regret, I returned to the Ministry of Health for a new assignment. In the hallway, a tall and beautiful Comrade Konyaieva from the Ungheny District was gathering a group of doctors for her area. My colleagues surrounded her: Senya Kamenker, Monya Tonenboym, and Vitold Epshtein. They were also late and searching for a new assignment. Comrade Konyaieva claimed that we were lucky to join her and, among other reasons, mentioned that our rural hospitals had enough firewood for the entire winter. All four of us agreed without hesitation. Thus, we became chief doctors in rural hospitals and had to start our careers in the most remote and backward villages of Moldova, which lacked electricity and roads and had horse carriages as the only means of transportation. It was 1952, the beginning of a new phase in my life that lasted thirteen years instead of the expected 'exile' of three years. On the eve of my arrival at Unceshty, I got married. At the same time, my school friend Grisha Berman got married. He was a mathematician, and his new wife was a chemist.
  
  When I suddenly informed my parents about the upcoming marriage, they gave me the 'go-ahead instead of the expected confrontation.' I took Toliana's hand and led the way to the civil registry. The witnesses were Grisha Berman and Volodya Kalnitskiy. Toliana came to Unceshty a week after me. As mentioned, she did not finish medical school but became an X-ray technician. She worked in the x-ray lab I founded as chief of the Unceshty Hospital. A year later, on November 24, 1953, after a difficult delivery with the help of a district midwife, we had a son, Anatoly.
  
  
  
  Lev Vaysman with his grandson Anatoly, 1956, Kishinev
  Becoming a Doctor
  
  My departure to the village of Unceshty was scheduled for August 16th, 1952. I was going to take the 'Moscow-Bucharest' train since it had a stop at my new home rail station and brought the necessary things with me. There were medical manuals, clothing, an umbrella, and galoshes (rubber overshoes) that mom insisted on. She also managed to pack a lot of food. In her opinion, the food was to be helpful to me in the beginning. Not arguing, I agreed. The ticket price for the international class to Unceshty was 40 rubles. The trip lasted 3 hours and suited me in every way, so later, for many years, I was going home the same way, regardless of my limited financial resources (in 1952, I was paid 650 rubles a year as a doctor and another 10 rubles as head of the hospital). Looking back, I am unsure how to survive on that money, especially with my frequent trips home. So, when the Children's Trachoma Orphanage in the neighboring village of Chetyreny offered me an additional part-time position, I happily agreed. However, the salary was paid in food, not cash. It suited me well because, at that time, the food was challenging to get. (Trachoma is an eye disease caused by a bacterial infection with chlamydia trachomatis.)
  
  My train stopped at the destination late at night. It was raining, and I jumped out of the railcar. I was supposed to meet a man in a hospital horse carriage. When the station emptied, a Moldovan man approached me. His name was Kostya. I was overjoyed and asked how he could recognize me. Kostya responded, 'I recognized you when you opened the umbrella because we don't have umbrellas here. ' The sky was gray. I sat in the 'doctor's car' pulled by two sickly horses, and we took the course to Unceshty. It was the evening of August 16th, 1952.
  
  The road went uphill. The horses were sorry to watch as they barely dragged the carriage. I was staring at the darkness of the neighborhood, which did not have electricity.
  
  My sense of duty and romantic nature led me to these forgotten Moldovan villages where the post-war devastation dominated. Hearing how hard the horses were breathing, we decided to get off the carriage and walk on our feet. The ground was wet, and I put on my galoshes.
  
  We passed 15 kilometers in two hours, and when a valley with barely lightened houses appeared before my eyes, I reached my destination. The first village was called Manuileshty. Another one, Vulpeshty, seemed farther to the left. These villages shared a well that reminded me of the Biblical stories about Jacob's meeting with his wife. Then, there was another hill. Half an hour later, wearing galoshes and with an umbrella, I reached my residence at the hospital. A tavern and a food store were on the hill to the left. A couple of men were standing nearby. Kostya ordered me to close the umbrella so as not to cause laughter. The carriage with the tormented horses finally entered my hospital, where I was met with kind smiles and questions on their faces. The people were skeptical about how I would lead the hospital crew with 15 beds, no electricity, no laboratory, and no physiotherapeutic room. I organized all that within the next 13 years.
  
  I was taken to a house opposite the hospital. Passing through mud, I lost one of my galoshes, but not to embarrass myself in front of the curious villagers, I pretended not to notice. The hospital housekeeper, Volodya Marar, who accompanied me to the house, became my faithful helper and friend for years, even though he liked to drink and I didn't.
  
  My new place had two rooms with low ceilings. One room had a bed, a table, and two chairs. The second one served as a kitchen. I noticed a hole in its ceiling. The hospital was organized in the house of a former kulak after the Soviets sent him away. (Kulak - a relatively wealthy Russian peasant who could own a farm and hire laborers.)
  
  Tired, I went to bed after eating the food my mom had carefully packed into my suitcase. The housekeeper brought back the lost galoshes that I had already forgotten about.
  
  The night went awful. Screaming women awakened me in the middle of my sleep. I asked Volodya what happened. He explained that our two midwives and one nurse tried to pick nuts from the hospital nut tree before I got to them.
  
  In the morning, I went to the outpatient block for my first round, introduced myself, and met with my staff, 15 people altogether. Among nurses, midwives, and auxiliary personnel, I noticed an older man, Ivan Alexandrov, who, during WWII, ended up in Austria under uncertain circumstances. Later, he told me an exciting story about Lenin. He heard it from his landlady in Austria. The house was formerly a boarding place where Lenin spent time before the Russian Revolution. Ivan shared a lousy secret about Lenin's sickness with syphilis. A famous local doctor treated the future leader of the world's proletariat. Most of the Soviet population learned about Lenin's condition much later, only at the time of Gorbachev's perestroika, when it was possible to discuss such things openly. Alexandrov served as a health aid in my hospital. In the mornings, he would walk around the public toilets of the villages and apply a disinfectant with the help of one other guy. Often, after those walks, they were coming back to the hospital drunk.
  My Rural Medical Practice, Part One
  
  At 24, I became the chief physician of a rural medical hospital with a monthly base salary of 650 rubles and a supplemental food package for my work at the trachoma orphanage. I was twisting the children's eyelids to remove the so-called trachoma grains. The Principal of the orphanage was a young Armenian. He kept his beautiful wife at home, hidden from everyone. Unfortunately, a few years later, they disappeared, and my extra salary vanished with them.
  
  My service area included eight villages: Vulpeshty, Manuileshty, Rezina, Old Florictzoya, New Floritzoya, Grozaska, and the two largest villages, Chetyreny and Unceshty, where the rural Soviet (the government office) and the hospital are located.
  
  
  
  
  A nurse's wedding at the Unceshty hospital, 1963.
  
  I was responsible for 12,800 people on three collective farms. Subsequently, the collective farms came together under the leadership of Mikhail Glemb, who became my best friend. Unfortunately, in 2013, he died in Israel at the age of 88. Abrasha Paromschik, who lived in the same Israeli city, found this information about him. I could say many good words about Glemb. He built a house for the doctors, bought us a car, 'Skoda, 'and helped to open a day hospital for tuberculosis patients. For this and other good deeds, he periodically received a warning from the Unceshty Communist Party because they thought that a Jew was helping a Jew too much. On this, Glemb was reasonably responding, 'The collective farmers love the doctor as their own, and he makes a big difference for the collective. '
  
  
  
  
  
  
  My Rural Medical Practice, Part Two
  
  In 1952, the rate of mortality among under-five-year-old children was 16.5% because of rickets, pneumonia, and malnutrition. When I left Unceshty, it fell to 4.5%, primarily due to my contribution to healthcare in the area. The theoretical learnings I brought from my school were accompanied by an entire suitcase of reference books. When I couldn't make a diagnosis on the spot, I would go to the adjacent room and flip through the medical literature in search of an answer. A doctor in a village is a universal specialist. I had to deal with all sorts of diseases. I went to the remote villages on horse carriages, skied down from mountains in winter, and, when it rained, and the roads were covered in mud, I had to ride a horse which I held by its neck until finally learning to sit in the saddle.
  
  
  
  Picture of our 'rural ambulance'
  
  The Moldovans feel special reverence for the priests, police, and doctors. Unlike teachers and other specialists, there was usually one of each per village or broader area.
  
  I recall a hilarious episode. Once, on the main street of Unceshty, an old lady approached me and started to kiss my hand, not giving me any time to escape. I was embarrassed and said that I was a member of Komsomol (the youth organization of the Communist party), and she replied that since a doctor saves the lives of her fellow villagers, he should be treated as God. Such a beginning of a medical career was very usual for a 'mama's child' from a bourgeois family. My good knowledge of the Moldovan and Romanian languages was a big help because many of my patients could not speak Russian.
  
  As a part of my duties, I had to issue warnings to those staff members who did not do their work well. Naturally, this caused discontent, and, by the Soviet 'customs, 'unhappy personnel started to complain to all possible authorities, particularly the municipal government and the newspaper. For example, while on duty, a nurse went on a date in the district center. Naturally, I called her 'on the carpet' and gave a warning. A few days later, I was shown a local newspaper with this accusation: 'Doctor Vaysman was enriched at the expense of the hospital. He took a pillow, a blanket, and a horse'. Such insinuations had occurred many times because I was young and strict. By the way, I have never had a problem with the locals. They were used to discipline, contrasting with the temporary workers who did not value their work.
  
  Despite facing numerous professional challenges, I decided not to request a second doctor. Once a month, I collected records of birth and child death from the seven heads of the midwifery units, although it seemed to me that those numbers were completely arbitrary. Then, I passed the reports to the higher authorities, and if they were not satisfied, I had to falsify the 'correct' numbers.
  
  
  My Rural Medical Practice, Part Three
  
  Every year, we conduct checkups of all students in the schools. It was needed predominantly for reporting, but those and other trips helped me get acquainted with rural intelligentsia. I made friends with them. We met at clubs and houses, danced, I played accordion, and once even performed on stage. We were happy to participate in blood donations that became actual celebrations because the donors were rewarded with free lunch and wine. Donor number one was always Glemb, the head of the collective farm, for which he was awarded an Honorary Donor Medal.
  
  Among the teachers, I remember remarkable figures of Kolchak, the school director, and Vasiliy Vasilaky, a future writer. He left the village and enrolled in the Moscow Gorkiy's Institute of Literature when I still worked at Unceshty.
  
  My first mother-in-law, Maria, worked in the Editorial Office of the 'Soviet Moldavia' newspaper as the head of the Letters Department (read and answered letters from the readers). She worked together with the later-famous Soviet poet Kiril Kovaldzhi. I often met him on Kuznechnaya Street in Kishinev near my house. In 2010, I emailed him my memoirs. It was joyfully received with a warm response.
  In my spare time, I developed a new passion for reading books. I started spending money on them, even though it was costly in the postwar years. I even subscribed to those large volumes of the first showy Soviet publications. I borrowed books from libraries and elsewhere, sometimes forgetting to return them.
  
  In 1953, 'the great Soviet leader' (Stalin) died. People were at a loss. There was an infamous state repression campaign in 1952-1953, 'The doctors' plot,' organized by Stalin, against a group of predominantly Jewish doctors from Moscow, which was accused of conspiring to assassinate the Soviet leaders. Considering that most of my patients were not Jews, some of them stopped trusting me. They were asking, 'What should we do now? You are the only one here and a Jew, and the party said that Jews are the poisoners!' To that, I replied, 'If you need a doctor, come, I will not poison you. ' People laughed and continued to receive treatment from me.
  
  
  
  Young Dr. Vaysman, 1959, Unceshty.
  
  After a few years of work, I gained a certain status, and, in the election period, the local authorities nominated me for the post of Chairman of Election. I naively hoped for some weight in the process. I was the Chairman only in name, not performing any meaningful function.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Midwifery, Gynecology, and My Surgical Achievements
  
  As I mentioned above, there was high infant mortality in my territory, especially among children under one year old. Weakened by war and famine, mothers often gave birth prematurely, and children were susceptible to rickets and dystrophy. They all demanded attention. I used to conduct monthly check-ups for children and provided all possible assistance, including free distribution of medicines. Such practices were satisfying, although they demanded great effort because the trips were performed under any weather and without decent transportation.
  
  On my site, a midwife examined women and delivered babies. Childbirth was the only type of medical work I 'floated'in. According to Moldovan custom, the husbands stood outside with a towel for the midwife as a gift and a wine bottle during childbirth. They wet the newborn's lips with the wine.
  
  Once, I had to perform an abortion without having any practical experience. There was a terrible storm, and one of my nurses who required this procedure refused to go to Ungheny, where abortions were usually performed. She met with a smile my refusal to work on this surgery due to lack of experience. She said: 'I'll tell you what to do. ' I learned the procedure from a textbook, and, guided by a nurse, who at the same time was a patient, in the presence of the other assisting nurses, I performed that abortion. Unfortunately, within a week, we had to redo the surgery because the bleeding had not stopped. Finally, it ended well, but I never performed an abortion again, even after going to a two-day seminar on obstetrics to improve my skills and to get a certificate.
  
  During my work, I often had to display my organizing skills. Once, I brought a bottle of alcohol to a printing place and asked to print 1000 forms for gynecologic patients and patients with thyroid diseases. (Apparently, there was not enough iodine in the drinking water, and I watched many patients suffering from goiter.) Then, I instructed the midwives to complete those surveys with the available women for statistical purposes. But I only went beyond collecting the stats. A thick folder of papers I took while moving to the Rostov region was forever forgotten in my garage.
  
  Mastitis (breast infection) was another major problem on my site due to a lack of sanitation during breastfeeding. I didn't know how to deal with it and did not want to ask the midwife not to show my ignorance. Then, I studied the Vishnevsky tutorial 'Local Novocaine Anesthesia'. Based on the drawings from the book, I applied a local anesthetic, boldly took a scalpel, made incisions and drainage, and covered the wound with ointment and a bandage. The result was superb! After a week, the sick woman recovered.
  
  Sometimes, on the streets of our villages, I met people (especially women) with ruined noses. It made me recall the lectures of Professor Borzov, who had mentioned that we will face syphilis in the third stage, which affects noses. We accounted for such patients and treated them with biohinol.
  
  One day, a patient with a huge belly came to see me. He suffered from liver cirrhosis, a disease complicated by fluid in the abdomen. I had several khaki bags with various medical tools, obviously from wartime, left by the previous doctor. In one of them, I found a trocar - a hollow tube with a nail inside. I pierced the abdomen of the patient with the nail, entered the abdominal cavity, and removed the accumulated fluid under local anesthesia.
  
  My next 'heroic achievement' was to pump oxygen into the abdominal cavity in patients with lung tuberculosis to compress the lung. I learned this procedure from Dr. Ostnis, a great specialist in the area. His wife, a beautiful woman, was an ophthalmologist but, unfortunately, died too early. Dr. Ostnis left later for Israel. There, with the help of our friend Tenenboym, he married my second cousin, Salya Landa. She also lost her first husband, who was the physicist Landa, who helped me pass the Medical school entrance examination by turning away and letting my friends help me.
  
  But let's go back to the problem of tuberculosis on my site. Due to the many patients, I proposed an innovative solution: to open a daytime clinic in the village of Chetyreny. The collective farm had to allocate space, food for staff and patients, 10 beds, and free medications. The Board approved this innovation of the collective farms, and the clinic began to operate with a considerable benefit for the population. Since I learned to inject oxygen into the abdominal cavity a few years later, we were able to reduce the number of tuberculosis patients dramatically.
  
  'Lenin's Lamp'
  
  Four young specialists started to work in Unceshty at about the same time. Victor Cherniavskiy was the Director of the Winery, Father Nikolay led a small local church, Mikhail Glemb headed a collective farm, and I was a new local doctor. Glemb represented the Soviet State and the farmers, Father Nikolai was the spiritual head of the local population, I treated illnesses, and Victor Cherniavskiy was the most important person because he possessed critical commodities: wine, spirits, and electricity. All of the high bosses had come to drink with Victor. Everybody was seeking friendship with him. I often visited him to ask for a canister of alcohol. Alcohol was the currency exchanged in those years. You could get anything for it. By nature of his profession, Victor periodically had to taste his production, that is, wines. Often, his wife Alla participated. Sometimes, seemingly for tasting, Victor would call me, and I would gladly attend the family gatherings. However, Viktor's attempts to make me love alcohol failed. Nevertheless, with his help, I completed many valuable projects for the hospitals and the village of Unceshty.
  
  One of the main projects associated with Victor was electrifying the hospital. In those days of the villages, the light was received from kerosene lamps. Without much hesitation, Victor responded to my request for help. My job was to get poles and aluminum wiring that were scarce at the time. With approval papers from the central Doctor Chief and a canister of alcohol from Victor, I, with the help of Volodya Marar, who drove the collective farm truck, went to the city warehouse to persuade the management and fulfill our request. I argued for half the day with an associate at the warehouse to release the poles and wiring to me. He kept refusing, finding many reasons for it. When all the arguments were exhausted, Volodya brought the precious canister that shook the stubborn better than any persuasion. A few minutes later, the warehouse chief and his aides began to load the poles, surprising me with their thickness, as well as a heavy roll of wiring. Then, we stopped by my parent's place on Kuznechnaya Street, where they fed us, and in five hours, tired but satisfied, we arrived at Unceshty.
  
  
  
  At our house on Kuznechnaya Street with mom and brother (at the piano), 1960, Kishinev
  
  The next step in the wiring operation was installing the power lines from the winery to the hospital. The help came from the chairman of the collective farm, Mikhail Glemb. He sent electricians to lay the first in the history of those Moldovan villages' electricity lines. Remarkably, it was done not by the Soviet state, not by the Communist party, and not even by the collective farm, but by a young and energetic doctor. I wanted to shout, 'Viva Lenin's lamp!' To be fair, the light was on only at nighttime and in the early morning. Well, that was enough for starters. (The term 'Lenin's lamp' (Ilyich's lamp) for an electric bulb was a reminder of the Electrification Plan under Lenin's aspiration.)
  
  In the coming years, again, with the help of the farm and chief of the regional hospital, Dr. Vainberg, we expanded our hospital from 15 to 20 beds and opened an x-ray, physiotherapy, and dental cabinets. Today, I wonder why I was always scolded, punished, and never praised for those acts. Why two Jews, the chief of the regional hospital and chairman of the collective farm, were constantly receiving reprimands solely because of me, the third Jew, who, apparently, because of the peculiarities of his nature, simply could not sit idle waiting for the others to do anything useful? I followed my inner impulses and did not understand, or did not want to understand that this was nothing more than a manifestation of antisemitism.
  
  Once the 'Lenin's lamp' lit in my apartment too, I bought an electrical radio. It was almost impossible to get electronics back then, but my father's connections helped.
  
  Victor, the head of the wine factory, finally left us and moved his family to the town of Yelets. He was a great friend; I keep some excellent stories about him. Once, he was teaching me how to ride a motorcycle. Feeling like a real man, I jumped onto a saddle and, without hesitation, stepped on the gas. The motorcycle escaped from under me just like a horse, and I found myself on the ground. Victor did not have enough time even to blink.
  
  
  Pontoon Bridge Regiment,
  
  The next adventure of my life happened a few years after Nikita Khrushchev came to power in the Soviet Union as a result of a short showdown around the Moscow Kremlin in 1953. In 1956, the so-called Suez crisis was erupting in the Middle East. Following a revolution in Egypt, King Farukh was overthrown, and young military officers led by Abdel Nasser, came to power. They blocked the Suez Canal, which was necessary for international navigation and oil trade. France, England, and Israel launched a military campaign against Egypt. Although Israel was established with Stalin's approval and survived with the assistance of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev somehow took the side of Egypt.
  
  Because of this event, a draft in the Soviet Army had begun. I and my supply manager, who fought on the German side somewhere in the Don region during World War Two, were summoned to the military. We were sent to a camp in Vadul Lui Voda on the Dnestr River, leaving our hospital without a doctor. Despite hernia, I was promoted to First Lieutenant and found fit for military service. Hernia would have caused me to be sent home from the service if I was only a low-ranked soldier, but it was not an excuse for an officer.
  
  So, I became a senior doctor in the not-yet-formed regiment. Upon arrival, I saw many 'amphibians'floating on the water tanks. I opened a clinic and was allocated three people: a paramedic, the head of the pharmacy, and a nurse. In the evenings, I treated the reservists, mainly aging people.
  
  When I asked the pharmacy head about the medications' availability, he said there were only four types: red streptocid, white streptocid, aspirin, and iodine.
  
  I remember my first patient in the military well. An aged man came and complained of back pain. I issued a certificate of incapacity for work and told a nurse to give him some aspirin from our inventory. Aside from helping me, the nurses disinfected the toilets with chloride. The lazy head of pharmacy was just carrying the streptocid leftovers from WW2 and moving them from one box to another.
  
  The regiment was armed with several dozen pieces of equipment like pontoon bridges and amphibians. However, it consisted primarily of engineers and other intellectuals, absolutely not trained in amphibious operations, and did not constitute any combat unit. Although it A senior officer quickly dispelled our perplexity about the mobilization. In the evening, he explained to us, gathered in the smoking room, that we were preparing to move to the 'eastern front.' One of our warriors asked about the whereabouts of the eastern front. Then, something happened that, I believe, was destined to happen. Because most of our reservists were Jewish engineers, the laughter was indescribable. We realized they wanted to send us to Egypt, where we would fight against our brothers. But the officer was just kidding. The actual Soviet troops were already prepared to strike, and we, the reservists, would have never been sent to an actual military operation.
  
  Despite the substantial technical assistance sent to President Nasser of Egypt from the USSR, the Israeli tanks of General Sharon had already crossed the Suez Channel. They were close to Kairo, the capital of Egypt. Soviet leader Khrushchev waved his boot in the United Nations and shouted at President Eisenhower and Prime Minister Eden to stop Israeli aggression. Finally, his wish was fulfilled through diplomatic channels.
  
  During the two months of our unexpected service, we swam in the Dniester River daily. Every day, I received food parcels from my mother through an acquainted driver who brought food to the regiment. In addition, I got food from the officers' cafeteria.
  
  Once, I was walking on the central plaza of the military base with an undone collar and untightened belt. Two staff officers stopped me, one of whom made a comment that mainly involved cursing. However, the second officer rescued me from the awkward situation by saying, 'Leave him alone; he is a civilian. "
  
  Then, the rains started. They were going for hours, as if in the jungle. Water was pouring through the holes in the tents, and we had no choice but to wring our clothes with bare hands and wear them again. Interestingly, nobody got sick. Finally, we were put into the amphibians' bottom compartments, laying in layers. In the thick mud, our car was moving slowly and throwing us to the right, then to the left, until it finally sleds to the side of the road. The soldiers had to attach a chain to a tree and pull us back. Finally, by the night's end, we arrived at Kishinev, where I went home and, waking up my parents, fell on the couch, totally exhausted. That was the most senseless ending of the two months of my military life.
  
  By the way, in the army, I did suffer from my hernia and, therefore, decided to get rid of it. Dad found a good surgeon, and the hernia was removed under local anesthesia.
  
  Beginning of My Career in Radiology
  
  In 1957, a local medical chief decreed that our rural hospitals be equipped with radiological facilities, and all young doctors were sent to a Kishinev medical school to study radiology.
  
  After 4 months of study, I earned an additional medical diploma in Radiology and spent the next 8 years working part-time as an X-ray doctor. That 'part-time' arrangement allowed me to see up to 100 patients a day due to the overwhelming desire of Moldovans from the surrounding villages to get the new examination.
  
  The collective farm chairman approved placing the X-ray beside the library and wine cellar. So, in the afternoon, I often visited my friend Victor Cherniavskiy, who always had a new kind of wine to taste.
  
  Intrigued by radiology and with many children suffering from rickets (a disease of children caused by vitamin D deficiency, characterized by softening and distortion of the bones, typically resulting in bow legs), I collected X-rays of their lower limbs. I accumulated a lot of such images and described and classified them. Unfortunately, this study failed because my main job distracted me from science. What could I discover in that well-developed field?
  
  I was tired of living in the old doctor's house and asked the regional hospital chief, Dr. Vainberg, to help me with the problem. None of my rural colleagues had ever complained about housing before. In that period, the Soviet government began to purchase the so-called 'Finnish houses,' quickly assembling small residential structures exported from Finland. Glemb, the collective farm Chairman, provided the carpenters who brought and assembled a three-room cabin with a veranda, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a basement. That became my place and home for the doctors who eventually replaced me.
  
  I also managed to engage in agriculture. Together with the team of the hospital staff, we planted a peach garden on the clinic site, for which the farm gave us some plants. Three years later, we tried the first harvest with great pleasure.
  
  However, not everything went so smoothly. One unpleasant event happened to my son. He caught a cold and then developed acute laryngitis with loss of voice and laryngeal edema. We urgently took him to Kishinev, where I spent several long days and nights at his bedside. He recovered, thanks to the introduction of prednisone, although the timbre of his voice had changed permanently.
  
  The Moldovans whom I served were nice to me. According to a tradition from Romanian times, they idolized a doctor and brought all kinds of food to my doorstep. Often in the morning, I discovered either a chicken, vegetables, grapes, or wine there. Some of it I ate myself, but a more significant part was returned to the hospital kitchen. I ate in the hospital because my wife and son moved to Kishinev. There was a dairy kitchen in our village led by a Russian woman. Modeled on that kitchen, we organized two more dairy kitchens for children up to one year old. It helped to reduce child morbidity and mortality in the area. There was an episode that almost brought me into the hands of the KGB. An older woman came with her sick daughter and, traditionally, got a gift of a chicken. I diagnosed a complicated heart condition and explained to the mother that the disease was not treatable. The disappointed woman reminded me that she just gave me a chicken. Being angry, she reported the incident to the authorities. When an investigator arrived from Ungheny and began interrogating me about this episode, I realized that not all my patients were that nice. I was in big trouble, but my friends Kamenker and Goldgamer, who knew the investigator, helped to turn the situation into an ordinary misunderstanding.
  
  Father Nicolay
  
  In the first years of my work, there was high infant mortality despite the use of penicillin. Trying to identify the source of the problem, I concluded that one of the main reasons was the church, and more specifically, the baptizing of the newborns in cold water. Even though Father Nikolay helped to paint the hospital with the paint I borrowed from him and never returned, I, a convinced atheist, wrote an angry article about him in a local newspaper. The article, by the way, has not changed his positive attitude toward me. We were young, and each benefited the people in his way.
  
  Once, I had the privilege to care for his wife (in the Orthodox Church, a priest can marry). I was summoned to the bedside of the sick and greeted by a welcoming variety of food and booze. Then we moved on to examining the patient, and I told Father Nicolay: 'Your wife has acute cholecystitis, but why do you have to ask me to help her instead of praying for her recovery?' He timidly replied: 'Of course, I will pray from morning till evening, but the doctor is a god of medicine on Earth. Do your job, and I'll do mine'. Thanks to the prayers of Father Nikolay and my diligence, his wife recovered very soon.
  
  Many years later, when I lived in the Rostov region, a priest from a nearby village, Leninka, requested my medical assistance. He was erudite and even knew some Hebrew. We became friends, and he started to supply me with church literature. In one of the magazines, I read that the priest of the village of Chetyreny received the highest award of the ecclesiastical authority, the order of St. Vladimir. It was Father Nicolay, and I felt proud that I knew him.
  
  
  
  Typhus and The Beginning of My Neurological Career
  
  Soon, I started to enjoy modest successes in my work. Infant mortality in my district went down to its absolute minimum. I presented at several medical conferences with good feedback. My personal life was also going well. I was reading a lot, had a vinyl record player, and purchased records actively, mainly classical music. I would start my day with a morning listening to Beethoven. Often, we went on harvesting, helping our collective farm. I was playing in the first football team established in Unceshty.
  
  
  
  Dr. Vaysman, early 1960s
  
  These were happy days until the second doctor, Bobrikova, arrived. At first, I was glad and gave her the therapy, obstetrics, and children's departments. But how could I get along with a second doctor who poked her nose into everything? Once, I caught her doing abortions and recording it as 'gastritis' in the medical chart. I went to the chief physician of the district, Dr. Vainberg, and told him all about that. Dr. Vainberg took Bobrikova to his regional hospital and saved me from her presence.
  
  The peace was restored at the hospital until one unpleasant incident happened. I was going to Kishinev for the weekend. When I got into the car, my nurse called me to see a sick woman from Manuileshty. The patient had a high fever, chills, headache, and no precise diagnosis. Instead of staying for the sake of this patient, I filed it as influenza and sped away. Did the patient have typhus contracted by her husband when he returned from a business trip? The tragedy was that when I came back, the patient died. I reported this to the chief physician of the District, and he, in turn, reported this to a chief in the Health Ministry. The epidemiological commission was sent to us. They requested to wash our population that suffered from lice. Even though we had always inspected our patients for lice, there was no nurse's record of the inspection in the case of that deceased patient. I was punished. Luckily, I was not put in jail. I was only removed from the hospital's chief physician position and became a regular doctor. I was called to the bar in the Ministry and received a severe warning recorded in the personal file, but I got off easy. Soon, the second doctor came from Kishinev, and I was transferred to the position of the district neurologist in Ungheny. Now, I would work in Unceshty in the early morning and return late at night.
  
  After thorough disinfection of the population, there were still several cases of typhus, but without a lethal outcome. Again, per my request, the collective farm allocated premises for the public bath. It was the first public bath in this rural site, and people, unfamiliar with such things, used it with reluctance. However, their introduction came from a communal need for cleanliness when most people could not access private bathing facilities.
  
  Valentina
  
  In 1963, doctors of rural hospitals were asked to go to the regional hospital and pick up the new nurses. Because I was more agile and got up early, I came first. Chief Doctor Vainberg smiled, 'You are the first buyer, and I know you will choose the most beautiful nurses. ' He brought me into the hall. There were about 20 girls. I walked between them, trying to choose 2 nurses. Then I spotted two girls sitting next to each other; one was bright blonde, and the other was almost a Gypsy. Somehow, I immediately decided that I'd take them and asked only one question: 'Will you go with me?' Valya, tired of moving from Rostov, first said: 'Yes. ' Lisa supported her. So, I got a paramedic and a nurse. I put the girls in our little 'Skoda, 'so we left. After all 30 minutes on the road, I was stuck on the blonde Valentina. I felt an extraordinary drive towards her, falling in love at first sight.
  
  
  
  Valentina Reznikova, 1965
  
  About a year later, Lisa came to my office very upset. She said that she was pregnant and that her boyfriend Poya, who was drafted and served in Odesa at the time, was refusing to marry her. I decided to help her, but how? I wrote a letter to Army General Babadzhanyan, who had succeeded Marshal Zhukov as Commander of the Odessa region. In the letter, I outlined the situation and asked for his assistance. Imagine our surprise when the groom arrived in a few weeks and offered his hand and heart to Lisa! Later, Lisa gave birth to a child and lived happily for 15 years in the marriage. Then, unfortunately, she died early.
  
  Another rather funny episode of this period occurred when, one day after work, Valya and my friend Kolya Popovich stopped at the winery. As usual, the previously mentioned winery owner, Victor Cherniavskiy, seated us at the table and served wine. It was a new kind of wine that we drank as water. However, coming back to the clinic, we were so drunk that we could not go on and fell on the sofa, on a chair, and just on the floor. So ended the tasting of the new kind of wine, and we, as laboratory mice, experienced all the 'delights' of that alcohol.
  
  
  
  Potemkin-Tavrichesky Gravestone
  
  Once, my coworkers and I went to a picnic in the so-called Redenskiy forest, which got its name from the village of Old Redeny. When I stopped by some trees to relieve myself, I accidentally discovered a headstone deep in the ground with the word 'Tavrichesky'on it. Well-educated in history and geography, I realized that the famous Russian Prince Potemkin-Tavrichesky died here (on his way from Iasi to Nikolaev). Given all my energy, I, most likely, would have organized a commemorative event for the discovery of the stone and certainly alerted the local newspapers. But during that period, I was too busy dating my future wife, Valentina. So, I just reported the finding to the local Museum of Natural History of Kishinev. The museum staff took the information with thanks, but within the next two years, when I still lived in Unceshty, I have not heard anything about this stone. Surfing the Internet, I found a photograph of a monument to Potemkin-Tavrichesky near the village of Old Redeny. The question is if this is the stone I discovered.
  
  
  
  Monument at the place of death of Prince Potemkin-Tavrichesky (photo from the Internet)
  
  My Father's Second Ordeal
  
  In the spring of 1962, I received a phone call and learned the sad news: my father, Lev Vaysman, was arrested on charges of improper allocation of funds in the same trust, 'Moldraszhirmaslo. ' In this difficult time of Khrushchev's rule, several of his colleagues were charged in a wave of trial 'for the show.' My father found himself in the same prison where Kotovskiy was expecting his sentencing and where, in 1941, he spent months himself. The prison, by coincidence, was visible from the windows of our house in Kishinev.
  
  A speedy trial took place in Beltzy. My wife's best friend, Valentina Deripasko, worked as a secretary in the court where the trial happened, another strange coincidence. Of course, this could not change anything.
  
  The strange coincidences do not end there. My father served his time in a Soviet prison twice, and both times, he was sentenced to eight years. Both times, he was imprisoned for alleged wrongdoings while working at the same place and in the same position. After the trial, my father was sent to a labor camp in the village of Karmanovo, the district of Tiraspol. Again, it was just that village I was assigned after graduation, although I did not go there.
  
  Once, my mother, my younger brother Fima, and I visited my father in the labor camp near Karmanovo. After the meeting, we took a taxi, but the car had only 2 vacant seats. My brother jumped into the trunk, and the cabbie didn't mind. Fima arrived at Kishinev in the trunk, periodically stopping to stretch his legs.
  
  My brother did everything possible and impossible to shorten his sentence. He was pardoned 4 years later. He came back a sick man. After losing his job, he had to take a job in the same building but behind the counter of a book kiosk. Then, there was a boom in the sale of books as they became a valuable commodity. Dad had access to the most useful publications and happily added them to our home libraries. When he was 65 years old, my father retired. To determine the pension size, he was required to bring confirmation of employment from Romania time. Because he worked in a branch of a French company, 'Dreyfus, 'he wrote to his cousin in Paris. She was married to a hero of the French resistance, a Colonel of the patriotic group of Maquis that supported General de Gaulle. The cousin helped to get the confirmation letter, and a proposal from the company to pay a compensatory pension came. Dad went to the Interior Ministry with the French proposal. He hinted that it would be nice if this money would be donated to a government fund. My father understood and did not respond to the offer of compensation.
  
  
  
  Lev Vaysman with his granddaughter Zhanna, 1973, Sholokhovskiy
  
  My father couldn't sit without work. In addition to his duties at the kiosk, he helped the vendor of a neighboring store. Understandably, the two arrests and labor camps severely damaged his health. His blood pressure was elevated, and he developed signs of heart disease. During one of my regular visits to Kishinev, I noticed that he was taking nitroglycerin (a heart medication) too often while walking. As a physician, I knew the dangers of the situation and wanted to suggest that he quit his job. I also understood that, without work, he would feel worse emotionally. This condition could not last for long, and soon, my father suffered two subsequent heart attacks.
  
  In 1976, I was awakened by a phone call from Sofa, my brother's wife. She said that my father was in the hospital and I should come to Kishinev. I rushed to find someone who, in the autumn slush, would be able to bring me to Rostov, and my good friend Andrey Dosaev responded. In difficult weather conditions, he drove me to the Rostov airport. Then, several unfortunate events caused by the weather continued. Two hours en route, the flight attendant announced that the plane would land in Kyiv, not Kishinev. Upon arrival in Kyiv, I rushed to the phone and called home. My niece picked up the phone and asked where I was. She told me: 'Uncle Yuliy, you must be in Kishinev as soon as possible. ' I realized that my dad probably died.
  
  Learning that the Kishinev airport was closed, the passengers stuck in the Kyiv airport went ahead to take taxis or catch a train. I and a group of them took a ticket to Zaporizhzhya. We were late and ran to the aircraft on foot. Kishinev was still closed, so I flew from Zaporizhzhya to Odesa. We ran across the field again, almost on the aircraft's tail. An hour later, I was in Odessa and, waving a bundle of money, ran to the first taxi driver, offering any amount if he took me to Kishinev immediately. Having 500 rubles at stake, a taxi driver drove me to the hospital where my father was. I asked the driver to wait, but in my heart, I was hoping that my father was still alive. A nurse told me that Vaysman was discharged. I was stunned and could not immediately realize what happened. I exited the hospital and crossed half of the city by taxi. When I came home, the gate was open, and relatives, who embraced me with tears in their eyes, brought me to the house. According to Jewish tradition, the funeral must be held no later than the next day. By some miracle, I managed to get there on time.
  
  Dad was lying on the table, encircled by the relatives. After the deaths of two grannies in wartime, it was the first loss for me. From then on, I realized I could no longer live carelessly, depending on mom and dad.
  That night, my brother and I, crying and sad, were sitting on either side of the table, thinking about our future. It is time to recall how, a few years earlier, my dad's friend, who was leaving for Israel, suggested that he follow his example. He thought that for my father, who had twice suffered from Soviet reality, the decision to leave would be easy. But my father understood that neither I nor my brother were ready to commit to such an adventure. He could go alone but would not without his children.
  
  
  
  My father Lev Vaysman's gravestone, Jewish cemetery, Kishinev.
  
  The funeral was held on the next day. I was surprised at the number of total strangers who accompanied my father to rest and how he was respected within the family and society. My father is buried at the Kishinev Jewish cemetery, where the other relatives lie.
  
  With our father's departure, my brother Fima took care of our mom, to whom he came every morning before work. Because of our father's arrest years earlier, Fima was expelled from a good job position. He had to work as a mechanic at one of the wineries. Earlier, he was an engineer at a washing machine factory built on land that, before the Soviets, belonged to my grandfather Yoel.
  
  With that, I would like to end the first part of my narrative. Life in the village of Sholokhovskiy, my personal prison epic, and the period of emigration will be presented in Part Two of the book.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  PART TWO. Sholokhovskiy
  
  To my wife, Valentina
  
  Moving to Sholokhovskiy
  
  In 1963, when I was a chief doctor of the Unceshty Hospital in Moldova, I fell in love with a young, pretty nurse named Valentina (Valya). She came from the Roston-on-Don province in Southern Russia, Sholokhovskiy, to study nursing with her best friend, a Moldovan. I was already married at that time and had a son, Anatoliy. Valya and I had feelings towards each other, but she suddenly left, not wanting to harm my family, leaving a note: 'Don't look for me. I will find you if I need to".
  
  My feelings were severe, and I wanted to bring her back. So I recruited my younger brother Fima and boarded a train from Kishinev to Rostov-on-Don together. Then, a bus brought us to the town of Sholokhovskiy, where Valia lived. It was the summer of 1964.
  
  
  
  
  Valentina, 1965
  
  
  I remember my bus boarding a ferry to cross the river Severskiy Donets, a short distance from the town of Belaya Kalitva. There was a monument in honor of the Russian Prince Igor, a historical figure of the 9th to 10th centuries, who allegedly led a battle against the Polovtsian tribes in the area.
  
  We arrived at the Sholokhovskiy bus station in the evening. The station was located next to Bazaar, a countryside marketplace. The bazaar opened early in the morning when the older women began to bring jars of jam, yogurt, and fruits and vegetables from their gardens. We climbed up Gorky Street to make a turn into Mayakovsky Lane, where Valya and her mother, Maria Alexeevna Reznikova, lived in a so-called 'Finnish house,' a kind of easy-to-assemble little hut exported from Finland by the government and popular throughout Russian villages and towns. They had a small vegetable garden and a branching cherry tree with ripening fruits.
  
  
  
  Maria Reznikova (Savenkova), 1970
  
  Fima and I met warmly, but the hut had only two small rooms, so my brother spent a night at Valaya's uncle's place. The uncle's name was Dmitriy Savenkov.
  
  
  
  Dmitriy Savenkov with his wife and niece Valentina in front of their house in Sholokhovskiy, 1966
  
  Together with Fima, we convinced Valya to go back to Unceshty. She packed her bags without thinking twice. First, we got the train to Odessa, and from there, we took a taxi to Kishinev. When crossing the Dniester River, the traffic was blocked by police, clearing the way for a Marshal of Aviation (his name was Sudets) motorcade.
  
  I proposed a divorce to my wife, Toliana, and she accepted. For all prior years when I worked in Untseshty, she lived in Kishinev.
  
  We came back to work at Unceshty together with Valya. However, because of later events, we moved back to Sholokhovskiy in 1965, first Valya and then, after a divorce, I. My furniture and books followed by mail.
  
  In Sholokhovskiy, we turned to head physician Doctor Larisa Nikolaenko, who kindly brought us to her team. I remember a steep staircase leading to the fourth floor and into the future neurological department.
  
  I planned to work as a radiologist but was offered a neuropathologist position because they did not have radiology yet. Despite my limited experience in neurology, I began to work halftime in the inpatient hospital and another halftime in the outpatient clinic. There were 5 beds allocated for my patients. The head of the Therapy Department was our favorite, Zoya Hristolyubova.
  
  First, we settled in a four-family house with no restroom or bathroom. Later, when Valya was with a child, I asked the chief doctor and the head of therapy to help with a better place. We got a second-floor two-bedroom apartment on Gorky Street. It was an outstanding achievement, considering the shortage of housing in Sholokhovskiy. By then, I had formed good relationships with the general managers of coal mines that played a defining role in the Sholokhovskiy economy. Soon, I was elected to lead the local chapter of the Workers Union. In Soviet times, the Union was formally protecting the interests of the medical personnel from the administration. The hospital had 300 beds and a staff of almost 400 people. Medical staff served the miners and their families and was on good grants from the government and the coal industry trust. We had doctors of all specialties, but I was the first neurologist there.
  
  In September 1966, we vacationed in Yalta. Valya was pregnant at that time. We enjoyed the "Bouzouki" group, and I fell in love with Greek music. Also, we saw a Brazilian show with a group of singers and dancers. I have loved Latin American dances since then, and even the post-war trophy movies, including Mexican. It was the time of pop music. Among the famous singers were Donna Summer, Gloria Gainer, Adriano Celentano, Gianni Marandi, and then groups Boney M, Irruption, ABBA, Arabesque, Baccarat, and Pussycat. At that time, we also learned about The Beatles. I also loved jazz, although it was banned as harmful to the Soviet youth. We started to buy radios. Difficult to get, it was allowing listening to other peoples' voices. We were learning how to reach out to alternative information sources.
  
  Winter approached. My pregnant wife slipped on ice, and that provoked delivery. The estimated date was in January, but Valya was admitted to the maternity ward on December 28th, 1966, when the hospital staff had a masquerade event on the premises. Sholohovka had a decent clubhouse (usually called 'The Palace of Culture' in the Soviet Union) where I borrowed a Mexican costume with a sombrero and pistol. Overtaken by my performance that evening, I totally forgot about my wife. When I came to the hospital, the child was already born. We named her Ella. Valya looked happy, unable to take her eyes off the girl, and the women from the ward even began to worry that Valya might jinx the child. Then, I returned to the ball to announce my daughter's birth and was congratulated by my colleagues. That is how happily 1966 ended.
  
  
  
  With newborn Ella, 1967
  
  
  Rostov
  
  Sometime in early January, after Valya was discharged from the hospital, I went to Rostov-on-Don to take additional classes at the Department of Neurology. Ilya Anikievich Ivashchenko, a doctor of ear, nose, and throat, and surgeon Dmitry Ivanovich Lemeshko went along. We stayed at the campus on Karl Marx Street, where I made friends with a colleague from Krasnodar. His father was a retired admiral, so he had money. With meager scholarships and no other source of income, we managed to go out at the expense of our 'wealthy' friend.
  
  On the campus, we lived in a room with bunk beds. The company of doctors was diverse. I was raised in a somewhat 'aristocratic' Jewish family and did not learn the basics of the Russian profane language that they turned to in the evenings. Surprised by my ignorance, they suggested writing a comic dissertation on Russian obscenities and later, having
   a celebratory presentation at one of the restaurants.
  
  Taking it seriously, I began to record their obscene phrases and, finally, wrote an article named "Russian Obscenities and Their Significance in our Society." After cashing out our scholarship allowances, we took off to the 'Cafe Druzhba' (meaning 'friendship') restaurant on Engels Street. To defend my dissertation, a leading chairman and my opponent were appointed. I could hardly keep my laughter down during the presentation, but my comrades were listening with interest. Suddenly, two Czech students came in and sat next to us. They could not catch the humor of the presentation.
  
  After my speech, the leading 'professor' took the floor and again, in all seriousness, made comments using only decent words and expressions. The Czechs were at a loss but continued listening. Then, the 'opponent' got up and offered to approve the dissertation despite the gaps in this area of ​​my education that prevented me from revealing the essence of the subject. Only at the end, when everyone burst out laughing and started drinking, the Czechs understood that they were the witnesses to some weird Russians having fun. After reading the first lines of the 'dissertation' after my return from the trip, my wife threw it all into the fire.
  
  I recall the never-ending lines at Cafe Druzhba and their unusually tasty 'solyanka' (a kind of soup). I also still miss the miniature cakes from the 'Zolotoy Kolos' bakery on the corner of Engels and Budyonny. Whenever I went to Rostov for a conference or to meet my parents flying from Kishinev, I brought home several boxes of these delicious sweets.
  
  In the morning, leaving the campus, we ran into the first cafe for a cup of tea and a bun. Sometimes, I would stop by the flea market instead to skip breakfast and invest money in my collection of postal stamps. Our instructor, Tsilya Efremovna, was also a philatelist. She was a member of the Department of Neurology headed by Professor Nikolsky. Our shared hobby helped me to be one of her favorites. I was elected a student group leader. The group included a Tatar from Kazan, a Dagestanian, an Ossetian, and two Russians.
  
  The classes were complicated for me. I often stayed late in the library. Once, I found a medical journal in Romanian and, wanting to impress the professor, translated an article entitled 'Hereditary degenerative diseases in children.' When I showed the translation to my teacher, Tsilya Efremovna, she gasped and ran to the professor to praise me for the achievement.
  
  One time, Tsilya invited me and an Ossetian girl, Aida, home to show a collection of postage stamps. We had fun, and I was sure that as a group leader and a stamp collector, I would easily pass the most challenging neurological exam. On the exam day in April, I asked Tsilya Efremovna to go first, hoping to organize the celebratory gatherings afterward. My exam question was on pathology in the diencephalic region. I began to sink in the material and looked to Tsilya for help. Tsilya looked at the professor, and the professor back at Tsilya. Seeing that there was no way out, I thought of the poems for department employees written by me a few days back. Tsilya, as if having read my thoughts, just informed the professor that, in addition to all the merits, I was also a poet. The professor, who wrote poetry himself, pulled back the question and asked for something to read instead. As my last hope, I read a praise poem. Even though the verses criticized the department's lack of paraclinical research methods, the professor gave me an excellent grade. I thanked those present and ran out of the room, where Ahmed, one of the doctors from Dagestan, was waiting for me, and we ran for champagne, wine, and cake.
  
  It was 1967. It was memorable for our family because my dad returned from the prison camp. Working as the head of the raw materials at the Moldovan Vegetable Oil Department, he, along with the other department head, was sentenced to 8 years in prison on charges of funds misallocation and sent to the place near the village of Karmanovo, on the left bank of the Dniester river. In those days, when the Soviet leader Khrushchev experimented with the national economy, new economic councils were created but later dismissed. Then, searching for scapegoats began, and my father became one of them. At first, he was sent to the jail where Kotovsky, a Soviet revolutionary figure, was a prisoner once and where my father spent time himself in 1941 (I will return to this later), the prison that by coincidence was visible from the windows of our house in Kishinev on the Kuznechny Street at the corner of Benderskaya. The other coincidence was that the trial took place in the city of Balti, where my wife Valentina Reznikova graduated from medical college, and the village of Karmanovo was the one I was initially assigned to after finishing medical school in 1952. That assignment did not materialize because I arrived at the Ministry late, and the position had already been taken. My father was in a Soviet prison twice, and both times was sentenced to 8 years from the same institution, holding the same position.
  
  But let's go back to my story. I handed over the celebration to my friend from Dagestan, and a few hours after the exam, my plane landed at Kishinev Airport. Soon, I found myself in the arms of my family. Dad was released from the prison camp ahead of schedule, thanks to the efforts of my brother Fima, who managed to obtain not only his release but also subsequent rehabilitation.
  Additional Medical Specializations
  
  After taking additional courses in Rostov, I was called to the head physician of the Belokalitvensky district, Vasily Vasilyevich Sorochinsky, who offered me the position of head of the neurological department of the Sholokhovskiy medical unit. To my surprise, he gave me the Department of Diseases of the Ear, Throat, and Nose, while the head of this department, Ilya Anikievich Ivashchenko, switched to outpatient work. Thus, essentially, a new department was created. I directed it for 25 years from my 28 years at Sholokhovskiy. I must say, I felt awkward in front of my experienced and respected colleague, whom I had so unexpectedly replaced, but Ilya Anikievich assured me that this did not hurt his pride. Everyone understood the need to open a neurological department due to the specifics of the miners' occupational diseases, including traumatic brain injury, radiculitis, and those related to working with the giant vibrating jackhammer.
  
  In the subsequent years, my department was expanded by two rooms taken from the children's unit. I began to manage the neurology ward of 30 beds and received the position of District Neurologist. I had to visit remote villages and consult patients in the regional hospital. Additionally, I became a consultant in the neighboring Tatsinsky district.
  
  Tatzinka entered the history of World War II as a place where the tank corps of General Badayev achieved their victory during the Battle of Stalingrad. A 'T-34' tank, standing at the entrance of the Tatsinsky village, immortalizes this feat. It is one of the three tanks that remained in service after the raid to destroy the German airfield in 1943. To interrupt supply delivery to the encircled Paulus group, the Soviet command instructed Badayev to destroy the Tatsinsky airfield on which German aircraft were located. Once, participating in the military draft campaign, I took an interest in the history of this raid. The military commissar told me that when Badayev's group broke into Tatsinka, despite heavy German resistance, he found about 100 aircraft. General Badayev asked for technical assistance by radio with one question: 'Having only a few minutes, how can I disable all these aircraft?'
  
  The army headquarters decided that the tanks should drive through the tails of the aircraft and thus chop them off. Only three tanks from Badayev's corps survived and managed to escape from Tatsinka, where the Germans fiercely resisted.
  
  Throughout my 28 years in Sholokhovskiy, I visited the best medical schools in the country to take additional classes in neurology. In 1970, I needed to update my knowledge in the field of vibration disease that happens to the miners working with a jackhammer. I chose the course, prepared three studies, and sent them for review to Moscow at the Institute of Occupational Diseases at the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences. My work included x-ray diagnostics of silicosis, vibration disease, and other occupational diseases of miners, as well as individual patient files. A few months later, I was invited to Moscow.
  
  I took a taxi from the airport and arrived at the institute near the American embassy. I got a referral to a hostel on Begovaya Street and went to check-in. Again, just like in Rostov before, I, an ordinary neurologist from a distant Rostov village, was chosen as the group leader. Using my position, I began to inspire the group not to study but to visit the capital museums. Those trips were carried out with the help of a colleague from Moscow, who had access to the halls and expositions closed at that time for the general public. Of the many excursions, I especially remember visiting the Pomegranate Chamber in the Kremlin. As a great music lover, I waited in the vast ticket lines for the performances of the Bolshoi Theater and managed to watch all of Tchaikovsky's ballets quickly. My distant relative Chernyavsky lived in the Ostankino district. I visited them on weekends, and they helped me to get to know Moscow better.
  
  When the exam time came, instead of the usual quizzes, Professor Rachel suggested that I make a presentation instead of the usual quizzes instead of the usual quizzes, and the group would ask questions about it. I managed it successfully, but my colleagues, aiming for good grades, filled me with questions. I blushed and turned pale when answering them, but we got our A's. Professor Rachel liked to talk about the island of Brion in Yugoslavia, where Josip Broz Tito (President of Yugoslavia) often relaxed and where she traveled every year for vacation.
  
  Additional courses and certifications did not add a single ruble to doctors' salaries. Only the miners whom I served benefited from it. As a rule, my diagnoses of rare diseases were confirmed at the Central Moscow Institute of Occupational Diseases. In one case, a woman patient, who for many years refueled cars and, in the process, sucked the air from a poor-quality pipe to unclog it, developed a sensation of the presence of hair in her mouth. After reading some literature, I diagnosed her with "professional chronic gas poisoning." It puzzled my colleagues in Moscow, who examined her for a long time and ultimately confirmed my diagnosis. The patient was recognized as disabled due to this rare disease that, it seemed, had not ever been diagnosed before.
  
  I had described 194 clinical cases, which could become the basis for a dissertation, which the head of the department in Moscow suggested I write. Only 6 more observations were needed to complete the requirements. However, as a practicing doctor who is highly restless, I preferred working with people, which gave me greater satisfaction than science.
  
  In January 1974, Valya and I had another child, a daughter named Zhanna. Due to growth in my family and increased expenses, I asked for an additional part-time radiologist position in the Tatsinsky district, where I then worked 2 times a week in the evening shifts. I also consulted two neighboring medical units: Gornyatskaya and Vostochno-Gornyatskaya.
  
  In 1975, I was fortunate enough to go for some classes in Leningrad. My cousin Eva, who worked as a nephrologist, lived there. I had not seen her for over 10 years, and the reunion was inspiring. Eva was married and had two children. Leningrad impressed me with its palaces. I often attended opera performances and once managed to persuade the box office person of the Maly Opera House to put me directly above the stage for just one ruble so that I could listen to 'Bohemia.' I sat in an uncomfortable position for two and a half hours but received great pleasure. I visited the Kirov Theater and, for four months, listened to many operas and watched as many ballets as possible.
  
  We received a scholarship that was less than our monthly salary, so we lived poorly. To save money, I walked to my hostel from The Department of Neurology, headed by Professor Anokhin, located on Suvorov Boulevard, along Nevsky Prospect, looking on the way for cheap eateries and bakeries and then passing a sliding bridge. The magnificent sculpture of Peter the First, the Admiralty Spire, the Peter and Paul Fortress, and the Hermitage, which could not be explored in one day, faced me on the way. One day, at Hermitage, I was especially struck by a gallery of portraits of the generals from the war with Napoleon. The point was to enlist all the generals, even those whose portraits were not preserved. Therefore, several frames were empty and had only the names under them. I also visited the first American exhibition in the Soviet Union, located in the port, and the exhibition of the " officially unrecognized artists." To get to those exhibitions, you must go through the ranks of the security service vigilantly gazing at us. I remember a picture of a naked woman lying on a table and weak older men staring at her.
  
  Our group consisted of six people and was headed by the instructor, Shilaginа. Among the famous professors was Professor Semenova-Tian-Shanskaya, daughter-in-law of the renowned traveler. I was the only doctor from a rural area. The others worked in city hospitals. I felt awkward in their company, but I tried my best and passed the exam flawlessly.
  
  Looking back at my experience in Rostov, I asked the professor to write an abstract instead of answering the quiz. With his permission, I worked on the abstract in the library, but my trick had the opposite effect. The exam was attended by a parallel course that bombarded me with questions after my presentation. To save me and 'the honor of her group,' Professor Anokhin came to my rescue. Genetics was especially difficult for me. It was a relatively young science that we did not study in medical school. I have preserved notebooks from those years, during which, in addition to the course outline, I drew pictures and wrote poems in the margins. During my studies, Finnish goods and oranges from Morocco appeared in stores. I sent a bunch of those to Sholokhovskiy. It was challenging to get it back home.
  
  Having returned from a study trip with new knowledge, I continued to work. We had a large and friendly team of doctors, and I want to say a few words about them. I remembered five chief doctors who succeeded each other: Larisa Petrovna Nikolaenko, a charming and discreet woman who would not disparage anyone's work. She was a TB specialist, and my wife, Valya, worked once in her tuberculosis ward.
  
  After Larisa Petrovna moved to Belaya Kalitva, Eduard Arakelovich Agababov became the head physician. This handsome man won the hearts of many women. He was distinguished by never listening to gossip and ignoring scammers. He was the founder of the neurological department, for which I am very grateful to him since, as he headed the department, I managed to direct all my energy to treat the mine workers.
  
  After Agababov, Nina Pavlovna Melkova became the head physician. I have several exciting memories connected to her. On her watch, I had my first encounter with the KGB. They requested a psychiatric evaluation of a woman. I tried to explain that I was a neurologist, not a psychiatrist, but the person from the KGB replied that I had to confirm that the patient had a mental illness. In our conversation, I learned that her husband, a former military pilot, died on his duty. The woman went to Moscow to seek a pension but was denied. There, she knocked on all the doors of the Kremlin authorities and, of course, was monitored. The KGB attempted to get rid of her obsessive behavior with my help. I had avoided answering the direct question of her mental state because I realized that they would put her in a madhouse. Bringing up the fact that I was not a psychiatrist, I did not sign any document for them. I think the KGB took note of this. The second time, I met them at my initiative. When the war between Egypt and Israel broke out in 1973, a stranger started to call me at night and threatened to kill my wife and children if I did not leave for Israel. At first, I hung up, but once I recorded the insulter's voice on a tape and played it to Melkova, demanding she contact the KGB. I was scared, did not sleep at night, and could not perform at work usually. She, my 'good angel,' reassured me, saying that her husband, a director of one of the mines, was also called late at night by pranks and asked if he had forgotten to go to the toilet. Even though she considered this pure hooligan behavior, I insisted, and Nina Pavlovna got a hold of the KGB. The employee who arrived assured me that I had nothing to fear. However, this episode made me think about emigration for the first time. Besides the KGB, I dealt with the local authorities. The police called me to detain suspicious persons, most often drug addicts, so that I would give a medical "go-ahead" to put them in jail. Such work was not my liking, and I tried to help young guys as much as possible to avoid trouble.
  
  The fourth chief physician was Yuri Vasilievich Kachur, a young man who, like Agababov, was a surgeon. We were friends with the Kachurs' family and the family of another surgeon, Vitaly Nikolayevich Didenko. I recall a massive portrait of Brezhnev hanging in his medical office.
  
  After Kachur's transfer to Belaya Kalitva, Vera Ilyinichna Tkachenko, an ophthalmologist, became the chief physician. I have always been in excellent relations with her and continue to communicate with her and many other doctors on the Internet today.
  
  I also want to mention Efim Timofeevich Gorbenko, who, for 28 years of my work, held the position of deputy chief doctor or 'nachmed'. He used to comment at the daily doctors' meetings and was especially ruthless with my reports. I remember his regular on-duty phrase, 'Doctor Vaysman invented a new diagnosis.' For example, he disagreed with my diagnosis of "discopathy." In response, I opened a nomenclature directory where this diagnosis was enlisted. Efim Timofeevich was a baptized Jew, and together with me and the head of the children's department, Dr. Katz, we were a national minority.
  
  I work with all 30 doctors in our medical unit, inviting them to consult my patients as necessary. However, I had to consult their patients more often, especially in the surgical and emergency departments, when they would wake me up at night. The head of the surgical department, Dr. Curalesin, jokingly called me "the Moldavian professor."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  With patients, the 1970s
  
  
  A Failed Attempt in Neurosurgery Specialization
  
  In 1973, I had an opportunity to go to Moscow and study at the Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery. At that time, the Yom Kippur War broke out between Israel and the Arab states. I was settled in a hostel next to Kalinin Avenue. It attracted people by advertising the shops and restaurants nearby. My son from my first marriage came to visit me from Kishinev, and I began to skip classes. We walked the streets of Moscow, and there was no question of learning neurosurgery since I did not plan to become a surgeon but simply wanted to enrich myself with new, valuable knowledge in my work.
  
  One day, the head of neurosurgery called me in and asked, 'What is going on, and why are you skipping classes?' I honestly explained the situation to him. He removed his glasses and asked, 'Don't you know the political situation? I am responsible for each student; you must be at the institute. I do not want to answer for you, and you will be expelled.' I was rather glad because I did not see myself as a neurosurgeon. Thus, the war of 1973 between Israel and the Arab countries helped me to escape from the unwanted profession.
  
  The last specialization courses were in the early 80s, this time in Minsk, at the Central Institute for the Improvement of Doctors. I lived, as always, in a dormitory and was once again elected a group leader. The course included doctors from all over the USSR, including two pretty women from the North Caucasus. Zemfira was one of them. When I entered the class where the election of the group leader was held, I felt the wind in the doorway and closed the door without hesitation, as if I were the host. There were three candidates, but I won the most votes. 'Why me?' I asked, and one of the doctors got up and said, 'It's immediately obvious that you are a business person because you entered and closed the door behind you.'
  
  We studied neurology and disability assessment in neurological patients. The course was taught by Professor Leonovich, who presented us with her latest monograph. This specialization helped me to quickly master an additional work proposed by the district head physician, Dr. Sorochinsky. I began to conduct neurological patient assessments for their disability at the Medical Disability Commission. It was an extra income, but I had to work in Belaya Kalitva, away from home and could come back by 10 pm on occasion. The Head of VTEC, Eduard Mikhailovich Byshevsky, was my close colleague and friend.
  
  It is pleasant to recall that in the Sholokhovskiy medical unit, in addition to the mentioned chief physicians, I worked with a friendly and exciting team of medical workers. I remember the doctors, Kuralesin, Didenko, Gureev, Tikhonov, Chulanov, Gudov, Dark, Pyatilokotov, Kozmina, Vershinina, Vorotnikov spouses, Sorochinsky, Chernikov, Kuzmenko, and many others. Among them was Dr. Penzurova, a radiologist. Since I was initially hired as a radiologist, when I saw the old RUM-4 machine, I immediately understood why the doctor was running home so early. She simply did not want to expose herself to excessive radiation. The only defense against this old, primitive machine was a lead apron. Dr. Penzurova was very erudite. We often discussed ongoing events and literature.
  
  
  
  My colleagues from the Sholokhovskiy medical unit, 1980s
  
  
  Valya
  
  After moving to Sholokhovskiy, Valya worked in the surgical department as a nurse, then, after the birth of Ella, in the children's ward. She was allowed to take 3 months of maternity leave. At the end of that period, Valya returned to work, and her mother, Maria Alekseevna, was babysitting her granddaughter. Valya was also allowed an hour-long break to breastfeed. Soon, we moved from a small and cold apartment on Gorky Street to a three-room apartment on Chekhov Street, where we lived from 1967 to 1993 until leaving for America.
  
  
  
  In front of our two-story apartment building, 1970s
  
  Valya had a beautiful voice and often sang with the hospital choir and in a duet with Tamara Sergeyevna Inyakova. Their permanent accordionist was a short, little man named Edik.
  
  
  Duet and choir, the 1970s-1980s
  
  
  
  Valya had good taste in clothes and often visited a dressmaker at a local fashion atelier. She designed all her clothes and even sewed them for her children. I remember beautifully invented New Year's costumes: a queen costume for Ella and a 'musical' dress for Zhanna. The girls took first place at the school masquerade ball.
  
  Due to Valya's hospitality, doctors, teachers, and other village intellectuals often gathered at our apartment. Those gatherings were distinguished by the richness of dishes Valya and her mother prepared and the variety of music. I played the accordion and piano while Valya and the guests sang. Those were mainly folk songs and popular songs from the movies. We loved to dance and have fun in the local restaurant Topolek. Once, we were in the restaurant late when suddenly we heard a knock from the emergency exit. The head physician, Kachur, and I opened the door and said the restaurant was already closed. Before I could figure out what was happening, my long Jewish nose was smashed with a fist, and blood poured. The attacker then ran away. We ran after him, but unfortunately, we did not catch him. When I got home, I realized that I had a fracture. Since then, I have had difficulty breathing on the left side. Most likely, it was a drunkard, frustrated after an unsuccessful search for more booze.
  
  We also loved nature. A favorite vacation spot was the Staraya Melnitsa (Old Mill) on the banks of the Bystraya River. Almost every summer, Valya and the children went to the Ugolek scout camp on the Seversky Donets River banks near Belaya Kalitva. During my first summer at Sholokhovskiy, I worked as a camp doctor. My eldest daughter, Ella, worked in the same position before emigrating.
  
  
  
  
  Ella is greeting the head scout in 'Ugolek,' 1980
  
  Imprisonment, Part One.
  
  I am approaching the most challenging period of our life in Sholokhovskiy. On May 25, 1985, a policeman named Solomatin came to the hospital and hinted that I was accepting patient bribes through gifts and money. In those times, thanking a doctor by offering a small gift or some money was expected and routine, so I did not think much of his visit. I should have paid Solomatin a bribe to allow his accusation to go away. A few days prior, my friend Anatoly Wagenlater told me a few days prior, 'Be careful. The miners value you as a specialist but say they cannot get to you without money.' Naturally, I ignored this warning since the conversations were groundless. I was absolutely sure that I had nothing to fear because I was not engaged in any illegal activities. Neurologist Kuzmenko, who came from Belaya Kalitva to examine my work, did not find anything wrong either. He told me he talked with the Communist party secretary, who said, "Your Vaysman does not accept patients without money." Again, I dismissed the truth and said, "Who cares what they said?"
  
  I was marked unreliable as early as 1980 when my brother and mother left for America. A wave of arrests and imprisonments amongst the state officials for bribery and corruption was instigated in 1983 by General Secretary Andropov, who then passed in 1984. Doctors suffered as well.
  
  A few days after the policeman's visit, I went to the Ugolek scout camp, where Valya worked, and, just in case, warned her about the difficult situation surrounding me. As soon as I returned to work, police representatives entered my office and said that I should go with them. One of the policemen searched the office and interrogated my nurses. The other one took me home for another search, and we did not even think of asking for a search warrant. They cataloged everything found in the house and confiscated the state bond papers for no good reason.
  Nevertheless, they were not satisfied with the findings since no extra money was found in the house, and the deposit amounts in my savings accounts were relatively modest. I thought of myself as one of the most financially insecure doctors since all the money I earned was spent on my family and hobbies, specifically books, records, and postal stamps. We did not have any significant material treasures, like a house, a car, or a summer cottage, like 'the wealthy' villagers had.
  
  After the search, I was put into a car and taken to a police station for interrogation. The central theme of this interrogation was receiving bribes with the demand to recognize the 'facts.' Interestingly, similar charges were brought against a neurologist from Gornyatsk and a psychiatrist from the Vostochno-Gornyatsk medical unit. Within a short period, a dermatologist who previously worked for us and the head doctor of a rural hospital on the Leninka farm were arrested. Doctors were accused of taking bribes and issuing fake sick leaves, and officials - of power abuse. As I learned later, other criminal cases were opened against a chairman of the Krutinsky collective farm and a director of the Sholokhovskiy mine. The collective farm chairman was charged with embezzlement, and the director of the mine was accused of fraud since coal reserves at the mine were depleted. Everybody was just a victim of a campaign ordered from the top during the uncertain time of change in the highest echelons of power following General Secretary Brezhnev's death. Every second-in-charge wanted to advance in their career, and false criminal accusations were a standard tool.
  
  Looking ahead, before the court, when I was released from Novocherkassk jail, my wife and I went to Belaya Kalitva to see the Chief Doctor. He put us in a car and drove to his country house, fearing to talk in his office. When asked why he was not protecting me from the fraudulent accusation, he replied that he had spoken with the prosecutor (who happened to be his friend) and was trying to do something. Still, the prosecutor pointed a finger at the ceiling, making it clear that he followed instructions from the top. Only then did I realize that I was doomed, and nothing was left for me but to wait for the court and its decision on my fate.
  
  The idea of ​​isolating myself from society arose in the district party committee, or maybe it was a game of a local authority representative who made a career on it. It could have been anybody from an ordinary Sholokhovskiy policeman to the head of the Belakalitvenskiy militia. I often contemplated who needed my arrest since I brought great value to the Belakalitvinsky district as a highly skilled neuropathologist. Why was it necessary to get rid of a doctor who brought so much value to his patients and staff, a doctor who was called for duty more often than any other doctor around, and who was ready to go on call at any time, and to both Sholokhovskiy patients and to the patients of the surrounding collective farms? The people who testified against me were both my patients and those who called me to their relatives but with whom I had conflicts for some reason. However, to my surprise, there were also those with whom I had great relationships. It suggested that testimonials were given under pressure. For example, a store saleswoman from the village of Gornyatsky testified that during her treatment, she gave a bribe, the amount of which was not indicated. I remembered this patient well but did not recall any conflicts between us. Naturally, most witnesses were satisfied with my medical service and spoke about me only on the good side. Comical testimonials also occurred. When one of the patients was asked about the bribe he gave his doctor to get treatment, the patient replied that he had given me a bull, to which the policeman immediately cursed and said: 'A bull? What about money?" My former patient replied, 'But I did not have money. Dr. Vaysman cured me, and I gave him my bull.' I learned these and other investigation facts from the official papers and later from my patients involved in this mess as witnesses.
  
  I had a lawyer, but he was either a simple participant in the government's game or an unqualified specialist. His demand to release me from the courtroom for lack of evidence simply flew past the ears of the court. There was nothing to confiscate except for insignificant old bond papers (as I said, those were immediately seized without proper authorization) and household items that were absolutely ordinary. With that said, I invested a lot into my family, and we lived well. The Rostov region was adequately supplied with food and essential goods, including clothing and shoes. My wife was a frequent client of a local atelier, which could envy people deprived of this opportunity. We were a prosperous and happy family. Alas, all this collapsed very quickly.
  
  I am still not sure what exactly caused my ordeal. Perhaps all that happened because my relatives lived in the USA, but, most likely, just because I crossed someone else's road (as experienced convicts later told me). A couple of years later, officers at the Tomsk prison camp, reviewing my case papers, laughed out loud when they learned that I received a sentence of 8 years in a high-security Siberian prison camp for unlawfully enriching myself with the amount of 250 rubles. There were prisoners around me who stole millions, not to mention murderers and rapists.
  
  
  
  Yuliy Vaysman, 1983
  
  After Gorbachev came to power, my family wrote complaints to the Supreme Court, and instead of eight years, I finally served only two and a half. Some developments were going on in my prison camp that led to my coming home ahead of schedule. The head of the camp, a conscientious man, called me once and said, 'Vaysman, you are sitting here for nothing. It is either pure envy or your American relatives, or I don't know what... I decided not only to allow you extended meetings with your wife and children for good behavior, but I will also try to release you ahead of schedule.' Then he added, "I filed a request, and maybe you will go home soon." While the petition was being considered, another long year passed. I managed to see my family in Tomsk two times; once, my son came, and the other time, my wife and daughters visited me. They brought a lot of food, fearing that I was malnourished. However, I didn't feel any lack of food, as I was one of the eight prisoners whom the camp authorities entrusted with managing the economic affairs. I was a medical unit manager, including a clinic and a tuberculosis hospital. My helper was another prisoner, a former doctor from Novosibirsk, Pavel Petrovich (I don't remember his last name). I carried many tasks, including transporting paramedics to the hospital and pre-trial detention center, distributing medications, etc.
  
  
  
  
  Imprisonment, Part Two
  
  The head of the prison camp, a colonel, was decent, while his deputy, a major, was his antipode. This ruthless KGB agent enjoyed punishing prisoners for any 'wrongdoing.'
  
  The camp population consisted mainly of killers and rapists. They were mixed up with a small group of convicts who committed economic crimes. Among such people, I remember a former head of the state-owned Moscow Trading Company (Mostorg), Grishin's son-in-law. Grishin was the former head of the Moscow City Party Committee. Even 'Ogonyok'' magazine wrote about his case. Another prisoner was a former head of Rostov City Trading Company, who, unluckily, fell ill with pneumonia and was transferred to another camp, where he died.
  As I later learned from newspapers, he was given a magnificent funeral in Rostov. His criminal activities included taking bribes from his subordinates, such as store directors, and passing considerable sums to Moscow to get goods for Rostov. This arrangement was a product of the government-operated, super-centralized so-called 'administrative command system' and was required to fulfill people's food, drink, and clothing needs.
  
  My life in the camp was very different from the days I spent in jail before sentencing. In the prison, there were constant searches in the middle of the night, accompanied by screams 'to go out with your belongings.' Cells were so crowded that people had to sleep while standing straight, fighting for limited space. My saga began with the Novocherkassk jail. This one was created by Catherine the Great, and the best Russian minds spent time there over two centuries. Miraculously, in that jail, I met two people that I personally knew (including the son of the fire department chief). Together, they guarded me against the ordinary threats and violence of the environment. My general friendliness and the doctor's status helped me survive a difficult situation. However, the drive for survival in the inhumane conditions of the jail was pumped by a desire to return to my family alive. It is unlikely that I would have gotten through it if not for having my loved ones behind me.
  
  The cell was freezing. I was lying under a thin blanket in a room with broken windows, and only by magic power did I not catch a cold. I remember a female guard. Her blond hair and exceptional cruelty distinguished her. She had a whip in her hand and would indiscriminately strike at defenseless prisoners at every opportunity. We called her Elsa Koch by the name of the Buchenwald commandant's wife of World War Two times. Mrs. Koch received the nickname "Buchenwald Witch" for her atrocities.
  
  There was a death row in the jail, and ordinary prisoners managed to send food and letters there. Leaders who sat in those cells, not the guards, ran the jail while awaiting execution. A young man among them amused the jail elite by telling stories from books he had read once. The high-status criminals in our cell forced us to rip our blankets and pass pieces to them. The pieces were set on fire, and water was heated on their flames to make so-called 'chifir' (solid black tea). At night, the cell lived an underground life, and I saw, for example, how my cellmates were making moonshine.
  
  Once, when I was trying to sleep on the floor, someone next to me, who was in jail for murder, asked, 'Are you afraid that I may strangle you at night?' I was horrified, but another stranger came to my rescue and suggested that the guy leave me alone. It turned out that I had once cured his mother, and now he considered it his duty to take me under protection.
  
  I sent away my wedding ring at the first opportunity because I was afraid that my cellmates might take it off with a finger. The person who volunteered to deliver the ring to my wife looked like Glemb, the chairman of the collective farm from Uncesty, where I worked for fifteen years after graduation and whom I mistakenly trusted. He delivered the ring to my wife but aggressively requested money from her in return. Valya had no choice but to pay him.
  
  Another prisoner in the cell was a Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade, whose job was to purchase light industry goods from Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. He had the misfortune to bring a certain number of clothes and shoes from abroad for his family, was convicted of speculation, and was thrown into our cesspool. I remember New Year's Eve when the leaders drank chifir (the solid tea) and made noise while the ordinary thought about our loved ones and tried vainly to fall asleep. Thus, the year 1985 ended.
  
  I was often taken to Belaya Kalitva for interrogation. I observed the behavior of the senior investigator in my case, a gypsy by origin. He conducted the investigation very well, without attributing anything superfluous to me, and the impression was that I would be set free from the courtroom, as my lawyer was also going to demand. The investigator did not find evidence of my 'crime,' the case was based only on the testimonies of the so-called 'witnesses.' No one caught me red-handed, and the charges were based only on rumors and conversations.
  
  Gossip played a significant role in my case. It was believed that if I had a beautiful young wife, there would be a lot of money, and if my mother and brother lived abroad, I would have some additional income related to the parcels they sent. There were absolutely ridiculous accusations. One of the "witnesses" claimed that by doing a spinal tap, I process and send cerebrospinal fluid abroad for a lot of money. The version that my son was an Israeli spy was also checked. In a word, the case was fabricated from nothing. Interestingly, as always happens in such cases, the society was divided into two groups. Some defended me and sympathized, while others said that 'he deserves it.'
  
  When I was finally transferred with other prisoners in a so-called 'Stolypin wagon' (where usually bulls and cows were being moved) to a Siberia camp, I met a Moldovan soldier. He showed national solidarity with me and brought several heads of onions. It was winter in Siberia, and we were passing a station called 'Zima,' where the Russian poet Evgeniy Yevtushenko was born. From there, I wrote my second letter home (the first one was sent when we stayed in Saratov, where my daughter Ella entered a medical school during that time). By the way, in Saratov, we were held in the building of a former monastery. I was trying to imagine the history of this building, looking at the walls, suppressing sad thoughts, and trying not to think about the future. One can only imagine how I felt, realizing that my daughter is now living in the same town where her father is sitting in a transit prison.
  
  
  
  
  My daughter Ella, Saratov Medical School, 1985
  
  Imprisonment, Part Three
  
  Upon my arrival at the prison camp, a man, apparently a Jew, approached me. As I learned later, he was a professor of mathematics. He brought some carpets from a trip abroad for resale, which was considered illegal speculation despite his merits as a prominent scientist. He was engaged in propaganda work at the camp. Before a new prisoner came, the camp authorities and the prisoners' "authorities" were aware of him, and the professor was one of those. He said that he knew who I was and that I would be under his protection and the protection of another person from Moscow who was involved in the distribution of work in the camp. So, I entered the ranks of those 'privileged' prisoners who lived a 'good life' in the camp. I became a supply manager and made friends with the other supply managers. I could move freely within the camp, carrying medicines in my hands.
  
  I often had to enter the tuberculosis clinic to treat some epileptic patients there with diazepam, risking contracting tuberculosis myself, but there was no fear in my mind. Of course, as a prisoner, I could not handle syringes with tranquilizers officially, but the doctors trusted me, and at night time, I actually did their work. They entrusted me so much that even our KGB officer kept quiet about it, although he wanted to settle scores with me. Once, I was on a detour with a young nurse who then requested me to go around the cells to distribute medications myself while she went about her business. Having not even managed to get around half of the cells, I was caught by the KGB officer, who reminded me that it was illegal for me to fulfill the duties of free people. Although I was only following the orders of my 'free people' superiors, I almost came under arrest. Thanks to my head physician, who managed to bargain for me and get me back to work. Unfortunately, I cannot recall the names of those numerous people who helped me get by in the camp.
  
  I did everything so my patients were clothed, had decent shoes, and ate well. I personally brought dinner to them. Once, to improve nutrition in my wards, I planted parsley and dill outside the building from the seeds that the nurses brought. For this initiative, the KGB officer wanted to punish me again. 'Have you forgotten you are in prison?' he shouted angrily. I explained that the 'crimes' happened because of the doctor's desire to help the patients and enrich their food with vitamins. I received a harsh answer: 'They are punished and should not receive any vitamins. Do you know what crimes they committed? These are thieves, these are murderers, and these are rapists. How dare you bring food to them and spice it up with dill and parsley!' He concluded our conversation with a promise to, sooner or later, put me in jail.
  
  Another time, it came to me to create a library for the prisoners. They often bought magazines for the money earned in the camp, but later, the magazines went out of use when the owners left the camp. I ordered my assistant (a murderer from Buryatia) and his predecessor, Kolya (also a murderer), to collect magazines at night and bring them to me. Then, I taught them how to make bindings, and we created many books from those magazines. Finally, I handed over numerous volumes to our nurses for keeping at home until I was released from the camp. It was a period of Perestroika and so-called 'glasnost' (when previously prohibited literature and information were allowed). Much of what was of great interest to a book lover came to print. However, this endeavor of mine also ended badly. Once, the KGB officer came, saw the bound-up books, and ordered them burned immediately. He requested to cease our 'librarian' activities. To my objections that the Nazis burned books in Germany, he said to me, 'Vaysman, you are like an alien from another planet. Do you know where you are? What books are you talking about? No one should read anything here!' Unable to consciously burn books, I loaded some paper thrush on a sled and took it outside for burning to make the impression of fulfilling the order. (Using a sled, by the way, was adopted throughout the camp per my suggestion for helping us transfer food around.) In the end, we hid the books and saved them.
  
  One more initiative of mine that almost led me to a new trial and sentence was an attempt to paint the walls of the medical ward and the waiting room doors. I asked the beautiful blonde nurse, who always responded to my requests for a few bottles of vitamins and gave them to the camp employees in exchange for white paint. When the guards saw me getting a bucket and starting to paint the walls, I was immediately handed over to the KGB officer, who said, 'Well, that is it, Vaysman, you are done.' Again, I started to object that nothing wrong was going on and that this was just an effort to improve the condition of the tuberculosis patients since I am a supply manager and a doctor by profession. To that, he replied to me, 'You are not a doctor, and they are not tuberculosis patients. You are all prisoners. When will you understand this? I am going to jail you now'. As always, the colonel who commanded the camp came to the rescue, and I was released with just a warning. Since then, I have behaved more carefully. I sat at the reception with Pyotr Petrovich, a former doctor from Novosibirsk, convicted, just like me, on a fake charge. He was giving out sick leaves, and I was taking blood from the newly arriving prisoners while trying not to engage in any amateur performances anymore.
  
  Once, the camp commander (the colonel) became ill. A convict named Vasiliy, who lived with him and fulfilled all his orders, ran up to me with the order, 'Immediately get to the boss!' I jumped, unaware of what to expect. It turned out that the boss had food poisoning. I did my best to make him feel better while some people in uniform were waiting at the door. They looked at me perplexedly as I walked past them into the colonel's office and back.
  
  Another time, the boss asked me for advice about noises in his ears. I asked him why he requested a prisoner's help, not calling his own doctors. He replied, 'You know, I don't trust them. What is their practice? They say you were one of the best doctors in the Rostov region. I want you to treat me.' I suggested acupuncture, which I had learned, and achieved a high success rate with my patients. He immediately allowed me to write to my wife, and, in a while, the needles arrived by mail. The treatment helped, and the colonel was pleased. Perhaps this played a role in my early release from the camp.
  
  In general, I lived happily, ate what I wanted, and the prisoner responsible for the rations distribution (formally, he was a chief engineer of the Electronics Pavilion at the central Soviet exhibit hall in Moscow, named VDNKh) treated me with lemons daily. Vasya, the colonel prisoner-assistant, gave me wine and Soviet holiday entertainment on TV for the New Year holiday. Sometimes, the guards were losing track of me. Once, a missing prisoner alarm was triggered while I was sitting with Vasya as if nothing had happened, and I did not even feel guilty.
  
  Once, an elderly nurse who helped me by passing my letters to the family brought me to sit on a balcony where only the camp administration could be during a concert for the prisoners. This caused much amusement and amazement within the prison crowd.
  
  Together with a professor of mathematics, we produced a 'newspaper' clipped on a wall. I lectured in barracks and carried out 'political information' meetings. When a leader of one of the renowned Soviet musical bands arrived as a new prisoner, a camp ensemble was created under his leadership.
  
  After curing the colonel, the word of my 'magic' medical abilities spread. One night, a military man from Tomsk arrived to see me for a consultation on his wife's illness. I escorted him to the doctor's office, opening the door with my key. It was a rule violation, and I had to explain that, at night, I provided first aid before the doctor's arrival. He smiled slyly but said nothing. We talked, and I made a presumptive diagnosis and said that I would be glad to examine the patient, but I understand this is impossible. I learned from him that the higher Internal Affairs officers knew me only from the best side. At the end of his visit, he added, "When you are free, we will miss you." Many other officers repeated that line to me over and over again. When the time came to set me free, there was a cold winter, and I needed some warm clothes. One of the officers personally sent a telegram to my son in Kishinev and told him that. I wanted to learn how much he paid for it, but he only smiled and said: "You have done so much good to all we owe you."
  
  My boss called me one fine day, saying: 'There will be a commission soon. I will introduce you as the best to apply for early release. I have my prosecutor there, so you are already free.' After serving for two and a half years and getting parole, I returned home. Imagine a scene where I run to the second floor of our apartment house, ring the doorbell, and my wife, whom I love and miss very much, runs out to me. It was an indescribable reunion.
  
  
  With daughter Zhanna upon returning from the Tomsk prison camp in 1987
  
  As for the people of Sholokhovskiy, many came to me with greetings, but some turned away. Some former friends also turned their backs on me. Two weeks later, I registered with the police, and they told me that after some time, they would remove my criminal record. I returned to the hospital, taking my old position as if nothing had happened. Additionally, I started to take hypnosis and acupuncture patients at home as a private practice. Rapid changes were occurring throughout the country. A new law allowing small business was passed on the 1st of May, 1987. I began to get paid 'officially' for my private work, although, due to the difficult economic situation, the patients usually brought chickens and honey instead of cash.
  
  My Father's Rehabilitation
  
  Not only do I have to spend time in prison. The other family members had been subjected to repression, deportation, or imprisonment since 1940. Although I already touched on my father's ordeal in the prior book, I want to talk more about it. Let me remind you that he went to jail twice. Both times, the cases were fabricated on fake denunciations and did not contain evidence other than testimony, as with me.
  
  In February 1941, people in military uniforms came to our house in Kishinev with a search warrant to arrest my father. The following day, my mother ran for help and advice to Aunt Esterka, the wife of her father's brother David, but, it turned out, David was arrested in the same manner on the same night.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  From left to right: David Vaysman with his wife and daughter, Lev Vaysman (early 1960s).
  
  
  Dad fell under a political article, economic counter-revolution. The accusations raised a natural question: How could he engage in counter-revolution against the Soviet Union while living in another state (Moldova was a part of Romania until 1940)? He was told that he had exploited and robbed peasants and was also a lieutenant in the Romanian army. At first, papa refused to sign the accusations protocol, so his handlers harassed him with a promise of torture. They said that if he did not sign, they would insert needles under his nails. This terrible truth was passed to me by my father upon his return, and even my mother was not aware of his experience. In the infamous Moscow prison named Butyrka, he once saw his brother David.
  
  Both brothers were sentenced to 8 years. Papa was sent to the North, to the city of Verkhoturye, where freezing temperatures reach 60 degrees Celsius. At first, as my father told me later, he performed the most challenging labor on par with all prisoners. However, noticing his organizational skills and considering his profession, the camp authorities transferred him to office work, where he became an accountant. The head of the camp was a general, exceedingly fierce but fanatically fair. After the fourth year, he called my father and said that he intended to save him since he would not survive here much longer, given his poor health and incapacity to perform hard labor. The general sent him to see a doctor. Dad visited the doctor and received a silk thread from him, which had to be smoked in a cigarette on the eve of the medical commission from Moscow. This commission came once a year and was the only hope for an early release due to illness. The doctor warned my father that he would feel a strong heartbeat after smoking the silk thread but needed patience.
  
  Having done as the doctor ordered, dad came to the commission of five doctors. One of them listened to him, then talked with the others, and finally informed my father that his health condition no longer allowed him to be in the camp so that he would be released.
  
  In the new times, my daughter Ella wrote to the Moldovan Information and Security Services archives and received paper copies of my father's case files. Based on those papers, she wrote a report that I am providing below.
  
  Afterward,
  
  
  Although our lives returned to normal upon my return from prison, the overall situation in the country was heating up. Once, I came across a leaflet by the so-called Cossack Army in Rostov, in which a candidate chieftain was answering a question, 'What will you do with the Communists and Jews?' with his reply, 'We will beat them up!' It became clear that I had to leave, so we began preparing for the American emigration.
  
  Our family arrived in the United States on October 29, 1993. More than 25 years have passed since then, and I hope my children will record this period of our life with all its difficulties, joys, ups, and downs. Someday, they will get to it.
  
  Yours, Yuliy Vaysman
  
  
  
  Аrchival Materials from Case No. 09499
  (by Ella Romm, the book author's daughter)
  
  I never thought that I would hold in my hands the documents related to a terrible period in Soviet history, documents that featured the words 'NKVD,' 'special commission,' and 'Gulag.' Let me remind you that the Gulag (General Directorate of Camps and Places of Detention) was established by a special decree of the Soviet state and totaled more than 30,000 places of detention. From 1930 to 1956, millions of people were held in it at any time.
  
  Per my request for information about my grandfather, Lev Vaysman, I received a package of 28 sheets that contained photocopies of the case file pages from the Information and Security Service of Moldova (a former republic within the USSR).
  
  Lev Vaysman was arrested on February 28, 1941.
  
  According to the arrest order below, the NKVD of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic received materials about his 'criminal' activities, connecting him to the Siguranza (secret Romanian police) and the 3rd Romanian corps, as well as active membership in the Liberal Party.
  
  
  
  Rashevsky, the Deputy Head of the Economics Department of the Moldavian NKVD, signed the decision
  
  
  On the same day, Rashevsky signed a 'preventive measure' order, according to which Lev Vaysman, suspected of crimes under Article 54-13 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (vigorous activity against the revolutionary movement under tsarism and during the civil war), was to be detained. Vaysman signed this paper on March 1, 1941.
  
  The signature was obtained using threats since Lev Vaysman did not belong to the Liberal Party and was not associated with the Ciguranza.
  
  
  
  
  
  On March 4, 1941, Groshnikov, a junior lieutenant of the State Security (Gosbezopanist), signed an order to begin an investigation.
  
  
  
  
  An interesting document is a paper marked 'Top Secret' dated April 9, 1941, signed by the Secretary of the City Executive Committee, Barabanov. This is the rebuke that my father mentioned in his memoirs.
  
  
  
  
  The denunciation was written with spelling errors and as if in a hurry. Of course, there was no 'sale of bread by wagons' that Lev Vaysman allegedly performed, and a reference to the city of Constantza was taken from thin air. From time immemorial, the Vaismans had been purchasing grains and selling them to mills in bulk. This is what they earned their living from. Mendel Vaysman (my great-grandfather) was a religious person who was respected by the peasants with whom he dealt.
  
  
  The following document, dated May 12, 1941, shows that, on that date, the investigation did not have any material evidence in the Vaysman case.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Although any evidence was not provided, 3 days later, the Deputy Commissar of the Moldovan State Security signed an indictment declaring Vaysman 'socially dangerous' based on two points:
  1. His grain trade in Bessarabia until the establishment of the Soviet State (based on a report by Barabanov).
  2. Kinship with Gersh Trakhtman, a cousin of Lev Vaysman, who was a Soviet spy in Romania, but after a failure of his espionage activity, he was deemed unreliable and spent ten years from 1937 to 1947 in one of the Gulag camps.
  
  
  On May 22, 1941, prosecutor Maksimenko signed a paper stating that the case was sent for consideration to the Special Meeting (the infamous 'troika') at the NKVD of the USSR.
  
  
  
  
  
  On September 22, 1941, a Special Meeting ('troika') was held at the NKVD of the USSR. It ruled to imprison Lev Vaysman as a 'socially dangerous element' in a 'corrective labor camp' for 8 years. From a handwritten note, the camp was Sevurallag (Northern Urals Camp), one of many Gulag establishments.
  
  
  
  
  
  Finally, 24 years later, on October 22, 1965, the case of Lev Vaysman was reviewed again, and the defendant was completely rehabilitated. The following paper is the official rehabilitation confirmation document.
  
  
  
  
  In conclusion, it should be added that Lev Vaysman's elder brother, David, and their four cousins (Pinya Vaysman and the three Trakhtman brothers, Gersh, Shimon, and Khaim) also became victims of political repressions.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Author: Yuliy Vaysman
  The initiator and executor of the project: Ella Romm
  Book translation and formatting: Ella Romm and Michael Romm
  Family photos from Yuliy Vaysman's archive
  
  Email: queenstory@gmail.com
  
  
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