Judita Haikis

This is me as a 10th-form student of a Russian secondary school. This photograph was made for the school album. Uzhgorod, 1949. I finished school in 1949. I passed exams to the French department of the College of Foreign languages in Leningrad. I was accommodated in a hostel and started my study on 1 September. I finished the College of Foreign languages successfully. I studied French and English, and also, passed exams in German, that I knew since childhood to obtain a certificate for teaching it. I met my future husband in Uzhgorod, when Rosa and I came home on vacation. There was an open-air swimming pool near the railway station. We spend much time there swimming and lying in the sun: Rosa, my sister and I. My husband Adolf Haikis was a doctor in the Uzhgorod military hospital. He was born in Kiev in 1921. His father Solomon Haikis was an endocrinologist in the clinic for scientists in Kiev. Adolf wanted to become a literarian, but there was no literature college in Kiev and he decided to become a doctor to follow into his father’s steps. He entered Kiev Medical College. In 1944 Adolf finished college and went to the front. He was doctor in hospital. In 1947 he requested to demobilize from the army. He entered the residency department and specialized in neuropathology. After finishing the residency he returned to the army and became a military doctor, neuropathologist in the Uzhgorod hospital. Returned to Uzhgorod in 1956 after finishing my college and we got married. Of course, we didn’t have a traditional Jewish wedding. We registered our marriage in a registry office and had a wedding dinner for our relatives and friends. We lived with my parents. I went to work as a French schoolteacher. In 1955 our only daughter Ludmila was born. We didn’t celebrate any Jewish holidays in our family even in my childhood. Since 1945 our family always celebrated Soviet holidays: 1 May, 7 November, Soviet army day, Victory Day and the New Year, of course. We always had guests and lots of fun.