Looking over my shoulder

Once upon a time there lived a Jewish girl in Soviet Russia and she was writing diaries from the age of ten. And then the war began and the girl continued to write her diaries. She wrote about bombings, people dying horrible death, about hunger, evacuations and about everything she saw and lived through. She was writing in trains, in railway stations, in basements and in the street. The girl survived the war. Later she was writing about life in Stalin and also in Chrouschov time. As young woman she finished military institute and worked for the Navy of Russia. Many years later she took her diaries in hand and wrote this book.

"I was born in 1926 in Rostov-Don in Russia. I finished the Military Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow in 1948. Then, I worked in the Navy as a translator and interpreter. I married a Naval officer. After my son was born I became demobilized. I lived in different parts of Russia and I've had many different jobs. The last six years in Russia, I lived in the Ukraine and was employed as head of a children’s club. Since 1990 I live in the Netherlands as a pensioner, teaching English as a volunteer."

I looked around and knew I was really alone amongst strangers. At first I burst into tears as I always do in difficult situations. After that, I found a young seaman who looked a decent fellow. He was ready to accompany me home. Decent he was, but he didn’t know the way to the unit. So we chose to go straight and of course lost the right direction immediately. To make it even worse a hurricane began. It was snowing heavily and the wind was howling so hard. It was impossible to see anything in the darkness. We were going on and on directly into the hills. Soon the snow was reaching our knees and sometimes we fell into the snow till the waist. From time to time we had to spring over terrible clefts slightly covered with snow. Eventually we found by some miracle the direct way to the unit. We looked at its lights, but we had to overcome huge hills to get there. By getting over the first hill we descended to the very bay and then we had to climb the next hill which was very painful for us. We reached its top and then suddenly fell and went down with a hiss, While falling I hit myself terribly against a rock. The blow came upon my ribs. I shouted from pain so loud that my voice was heard at the unit. We reached the unit at about five o’clock in the morning when I was already half unconscious, I stayed in bed for one day being watched by the doctor. He was much impressed by the strength of my body. But the pain in one of my ribs I am feeling all my life although it was not broken. As for the young seaman who helped me that night in the hills, he came to our unit some days later and asked me to marry him.