Lubov Rozenfeld’s aunt Dosia Rozenstein

My mother's sister Dosia Rozenstein in the rank of a major of the medical service wearing a Soviet military uniform of the period during WWII. She had this photo taken for a document and gave my mother a copy. Signed on the backside: 'Dosia Rozenstein - major of the medical service'. 1943.

My mother's older sister Dosia Rozenstein began to work in her childhood: she went to Kiev to sell newspapers and sunflower oil at the market. After the revolution she finished the medical College in Kiev and became a pediatrician. She married Dmitriy Zaslavskiy, a Jew. In January 1930 Dosia gave birth to a boy whom she named May, perhaps because he was conceived in May. May was handsome and charming, grandmother Bela's first grandson, much loved by all relatives. Dosia and Dmitriy divorced few years later. Many years later I got to know that Dmitriy was declared 'an enemy of the people' and arrested in 1936, but he returned shortly afterward. I don't know how it happened, but there were miracles happening at the time. Dosia must have given him up. She was a convinced communist and probably believed that he was an 'enemy of the people'. Dosia was a person of principles. She never accepted anything from her children patients' parents, but flowers, though some doctors accepted gifts. When the Great Patriotic War began, Dosia accompanied a train with sick children and managed to take them all to the destination point without any losses. During the war she became a mayor of the medical service. After the war Dosia worked in a children's clinic in Kiev. She was allowed to live in a small room in the clinic with her son May. Dosia had a motto: 'The cause of all diseases is dirty hands'. At the end of her career she inspected hospitals for compliance with the standards and many people disliked her for her strictness. When I visited Dosia, she always had a decanter of current liqueur, a piece of cake or candy to offer me.

May was very handsome and talented. After finishing Kiev Food Industry College he got a job assignment to Nalchik where he met a Russian girl: English teacher Rimma Senutkina. They got married. Rimma had the face of a doll and a terrible character. May was not happy in his family. They had a son named Alexandr. The boy had a hard life: his mother died of cancer, May remarried and the boy lived with his stepmother, but soon he lost his father. May committed suicide in 1969. He was buried in the Jewish sector of Baikovoye cemetery near grandmother Bela. Dosia lived her old age with her grandson Alexandr, his wife and their children Vera and Alexei. Shortly before she died I had Dosia move in with me: she could hardly move around. She died in 1994, at the age of 94.