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Daddy had three sisters. Feiga [Fanya] and Ida lived and worked in Leningrad all through the siege. They were awarded medals 'For labor valor' and 'For the defense of Leningrad '. Because of their experience during the war and the siege, neither of my aunts could link her life with a man, and both remained single. But Aunt Feiga Abramovna Shneerova had had a friend before the war, who was drafted. He regularly wrote her letters from the front. I have kept these letters, checked by censors [there are special stamps on them], until now, and I recently handed them over to 'Hesed'. The young man who wrote these letters was killed in the war. My aunt died seven years ago, when she was 83 years old.
The second aunt, Ida Abramovna Shneerova worked her entire life after the war. She lived for me, for my brother, and for our family, because she didn't have any other relatives. She died in 1989, at about the same age as her sister Fanya.
My father's youngest sister, Golda Abramovna Shneerova, Aunt Galya, was my favourite aunt. She passed away when I was in the 10th form in school, in 1973. She died of cancer. Aunt Galya was a medical specialist, and she served in the Army throughout the Great Patriotic War. She returned home only in 1949, because, as a military doctor, she continued to serve in the Far East, somewhere in China or Japan. Aunt Galya was awarded the order of Red Star and medals 'For the defense of Moscow', and 'For the capture of Koenigsberg'. I also kept these medals and now have presented them to 'Hesed'.
