Bronislava Fabrikant with her patients and nurses in the health center
This is my mother Bronislava Fabrikant, nee Bluvstein (in the center) with her patients and nurses in the health center. This photo was taken in Odessa in 1948.
In 1944 my mother returned from evacuation to Odessa, but there were other people staying in our apartment. Before she managed to have them move out by a court's decision she lived in a small storeroom in the conservatory that Maria Podrayskaya helped her with. Then one room became available in our apartment and my mother moved in there. Everything was gone - our mahogany furniture, my grandfather's pieces, valuables. My mother only discovered a copper mortar and a bookshelf at our neighbors'. She bought a black plastic upholstery divan, when she received her first salary. She was assistant chief of the cardiology department of the Lermontov health center, headed by Professor Zhigalov, one of the most famous cardiologists in Odessa then.
My mother believed in Stalin. She always kept a newspaper issued on the day of Stalin's death, with all the praises in his address. When the denunciation of Stalin's cult began, my mother didn't believe it. She said: 'How could this be?' She was and stayed loyal to Stalin till the end of her life. The Doctors' Plot had no impact on her. My mother died in 1963. We buried her in the Jewish cemetery, next to Grandmother Gitlia.