Natalia Tsessarskaya

This is my daughter Natalia Tsessarskaya. The picture was made in 1946 in Moscow.

When the war was over my wife and I lived in the hostel. Here in 1947 our daughter Natalia was born. Wife worked in Moscow children's hospital and I was taking care of daughter while I was unwell. My wife came home at lunch to feed us. When I got well, I was invited to Moscow theatre named after Ermolova. I worked as a doctor and I was an actor part time. In 1947 I went to work for the system of Moscow health care.

My wife and I have lived a long, hard, but at the same time very interesting and friendly life. Our house was always open for relatives and friends, no matter where we lived. My parents, sister's family often came to see us. I liked sister's husband, an intelligent and interesting man. My friends- partisans and participants of the theatrical studio very often called on us.

Daughter Natasha was raised like the rest children of that time- nursery, kindergarten, school. She was fond of the languages and entered the Institute of Foreign Languages. She had worked in the Ministry of Automobile Industry for many years. She went abroad very often. She is still working as a translator from/into German language. Her husband's name is Vlasenko. He is a Ukrainian, but the most important thing for us was that they loved each other. Natasha has a two children. Elder son Dmitriy Vlasenko is 33 ãîäà è daughter Tatiana is 29. Natasha's husband died from cancer 2 years ago. He was a wonderful man. Dmitriy is studying at the Economy Institute, in the 4th year. Now he is a general director of the company, working in sports service. The company organizes sports competitions. It is a hectic work. Tatiana, unfortunately, left the faculty of journalist department of Moscow State University. She did not like it there. She is currently working in the center of environmental protection. She likes her job.

I suddenly found out that there was new cooperative house constructed in the yard of our house. By that time our family had grown. Daughter was married and had a baby. I entered that building society. At that time I got the emoluments for my published book, so I could afford to have my apartment built.  My wife, son and I moved to that 3-room apartment, and our daughter remained in previous apartment in our yard.

At that time one of front-line fellow Lev Ermolin talked me into building a dacha [summer house] next to his place in Borodino[about 120 km to the west from Moscow]. At that time he was the director of the plant. They obtained the land plots for dacha in that district. He kept one land plot for me there. It was pretty far away from Moscow, but it was a spectacular place. I was hesitant, but when my second book was released and I got an emolument, my wife and I decided to build wooden house. Both of us did it with our hands. We are really pleased with that dacha. Almost every summer we spent there and children grew up there as well. Now my elder grandson is having a plush house built next to my dacha and I hope that my great grandchildren will be raised at my dacha.

I am not religious, I do not observe Jewish traditions and rites. I hardly know the language. I am not assisted by Jewish charitable organizations and I consider it to be humiliating for me.  My children were raised international. They identify themselves as Russians.