Anna Gliena’s mother Rosa Gliena
My mother Rosa Gliena. This is her last photo. This photo was made for her passport. Lvov, 1975.
When Ukraine was liberated we, I, my mother and brother Osher were notified that our theater was moving from evacuation to Lvov. We worked at theatre of the young spectator during the War. I was on a post of the manager. We arrived in Lvov in autumn 1944, October or November. We were accommodated in a house in Galitskaya Street, a house for actors. We had a big room and a kitchen. We had a kitchen of our own while other actors had a common kitchen. We were privileged since my brother was a leading actor and I was one of key personnel at the theater. We got this apartment in 1945. It was on the fifth floor and there was no elevator in the house. In Lvov we performed for young spectators teaching them to be Soviet patriots. We performed in Ukrainian.
My mother, brother and I were living together. It was hard for my mother to walk upstairs to the fifth floor and my brother started looking for an apartment on the first or second floor. He found one on the third floor: there were 3 nice rooms, a big kitchen and a balcony facing the yard. We moved in there. It was an abandoned apartment and there were no special permissions needed for such houses or apartments. My brother loved our mother dearly. They spoke Yiddish to one another and with his colleagues my brother spoke perfect Ukrainian.
My mother went to a synagogue in Lvov. She went there early in the morning at Yom Kippur and came back home late at night. I felt sorry for her when she spent there a whole day without eating a thing and I went to pick her home from there. She was aging and she still suffered from headaches, but she never lost her love of songs. She often sang in Yiddish and Russian to us. We had an old record player back in Kharkov. After the war we bought a new one and collected records.
In 1977 my mother died and I was alone. Shortly before she died my mother said bitterly: Feigel, feigele, (little bird) how will you live all by yourself?' My mother was so concerned about my loneliness; she had foreseen my lonely life at the old age. Our mother was a holy person for us. She was a very nice person, she liked theater, cinema, she liked arts. She was smart and my brother and I listened to her opinion. She believed in God and celebrated all Jewish holidays. I buried my mother near my brother's grave. I had a beautiful gravestone installed on their graves.