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And, you know, in my mind since tsarist times anti-Semitism is associated with the jingoism of people from the «Union of the Archangel Michael.» And here I saw –those who claimed that Russia had been freed from the Jews were abasing themselves, they were flunky-like and pathetic, ready to sell Russia for thirty pieces of German silver. And how much slander against the Jews was there at that very meeting… But, Vitenka, not everyone went to that meeting. Why was he doing this ?– it was he whom those words stained. And then I was told that he said at a meeting in the commandant’s office: “The air has cleared, and there is no smell of garlic”. And those cursed days when we met he didn’t greet me, but looked away. One was an old teacher, retired, 75 years old, he would always ask about you, send his regards, say about you: “He is our pride”. And not only the vulgar, the angry and the illiterate. I never thought that I would have to go through all of this. I don’t know, what is harder: gloating or pitying looks that are given to a dying mangy cat. The orderly Marusya hugged me and moaned softly: “Oh my God, what will happen to you, what will happen to you all…” And the doctor Tkachev shook my hand. I requested money for a month of work, but the new superintendant told me: “Let Stalin pay you for working under the Soviet regime, write him a letter to Moscow”. That was my housewarming party and she didn’t want to go to bed, and her mother took her away in her arms.Īnd then, Vitenka, our hospital was reopened again and I and my fellow doctor were fired. Yet her daughter Alenushka was sitting at my place all evening and I was telling her fairy tales. “You’re an outlaw” – she said in such a voice, as if it was really advantageous for her. Amazingly, she graduated from a technical school and her late husband was a nice quiet man, an accountant in Uksopspilka. The neighbor said to me: “I kept the sofa because it’s too big for the small room, anyway”. I went to the clinic, and when I came back I found out that my room was broken into and my possessions thrown into the small room. I refused as there was neither window nor stove. She answered: “No, you’ll move into the small room behind the kitchen”.

“Fine, then I’ll move into yours” I said. My neighbor, she has a six-year-old girl, Alenushka, endowed with beautiful blue eyes (I wrote to you about her once), came to me and said: “Anna Semenovna, take away your things before the evening, please, I’m moving into your room”. Where did that come from? Her son was married to a Jew, and the old woman used to visit them and tell me about her grandchildren. The street cleaner’s wife was standing beneath my window and saying to a neighbor: “Thank God, the Jews are finished”. And then some of my neighbors reminded me of that. The Germans were driving a truck and shouting “Juden kaputt!”. It was on this very morning that I was reminded that I was a Jew, something I had forgotten over the years of Soviet government. I was in my room, in bed, but I felt like an alien in a foreign land, lost, alone. I fell asleep towards morning, and when I woke up, I felt terrible sadness. And then I thought that it was extremely fortunate, after all, that you were safe. And I wished desperately that I could look at you one more time, could kiss your forehead and your eyes. I was terrified at first when I realized that I would never see you again. I decided that what happens to everyone will happen to me. The neighbors were going to each other all night, and the calmest of all were the little children and me. He got angry: “It’s too early to talk about that, we haven’t even made lists”… In short, these were Germans. I went to the Secretary of the City Council the day before to ask him about leaving. And suddenly I saw a tank and somebody shouted “the Germans have broken through!” I said: “Don’t spread panic”.

I went home, amazed at how I could have missed the air-raid siren. I heard distant gunfire, then there were people running across the garden. An announcer was reading an article about battles in Ukrainian. I was walking from an outpatient clinic after receiving patients and I stopped to listen. The radio conveyed the news in the city garden. It is hard, Vitya, to truly understand people… The Germans stormed into the city on the seventh of July. I want you to know about my last days, as this idea makes it easier for me to pass away. I will never receive your answer, I will be dead by then. “Vitya, I’m sure my letter will reach you, even though I’m behind the front line and the barbed wire of a Jewish ghetto.