Tag #124824 - Interview #95600 (Mia Ulman)

The family also celebrated secular holidays. My mother even baked Easter cakes to celebrate Russian Easter. Our home was very hospitable. My parents’ friends and my aunts and uncles’ friends visited us often and with pleasure. They were received very warmly. It happened so that many of our friends were Russians. I remember Nikolay and Ekaterina Nikitin, who were very close friends of my parents. My mother’s brother Akim also had good Russian friends: Alexey Krotov and Yelena Rashevskaya. Alexey was Chief Medical Officer at the Institution of Mud-cures and Hydropathy, and Yelena worked as a neuropathologist there. I also remember my mother’s friends Alexandra and Olga. They were sisters and lived next door. Alexandra studied with my mother at the Institute. When my mother died in 1970, they helped us very much – they stood in line for the purchase of a grave stone, because it was very difficult to get one. There was a shortage of almost everything in the country. I also remember my mother’s pupil, Alexandra Filonova, a teacher, who was a close friend, too.