daughter in law and her two grandchildren. Now she is living in a small province town in Holland.
Nina has written a book about her both emotional and eventful life in Russia and Holland.
The book is called: "My own story". (c) Nina Nicolina 2007. All rights reserved.
At this website you can read the first chapter of her book, called: "My childhood."
The story is based upon her memories. Now she has her diaries back from Russia. In her diaries she has written down her views,
emotions, perceptions and experiences of her childhood in Stalin Russia in the years of WorldWar II (1941 - 1945) day by day.
At this moment she is working on a more detailed version of that period of her life.
| CHAPTER 1 "MY CHILDHOOD" | ||
|
When I was five years old, I asked my Father one day: “Daddy, what does it mean “a foreign country”? I don’t remember my father’s answer, but I thought about it suddenly on a certain day, when my fingers were printed at the police in Amsterdam. This happened on the eighteenth of June 1990. It was the day when my former life came to an end and another life began. I always felt that I had several lives and I decided to describe all the chapters of my life. I was born in Rostov-on-Don in Russia on the thirtieth of December 1926. Probably it was a very bad day to be born because I was unlucky from the beginning. I received umbilical hernia and this is how it happened. My parents used to go out in the evenings to theatres or to their friends leaving me alone with the nurse. One day on returning home my Mother made a discovery: the nurse was drinking tea feeling very happy while I was crying at the top of my voice. The nurse was dismissed and I received umbilical hernia. Mother told me that I had all children’s illnesses known to mankind. She even said that I was ill with diphtheria three times, although normal children have it only once. One thing is clear: I could never sing because of this illness and that made me often unhappy. However, it is time to tell about my parents and my nearest relatives. I don’t remember my father very well. Judging by a photo and Mother’s opinion, he was very good-looking. He was born in Poland. Mother told me that during the Revolution of 1917 he was fighting against the Red Army, but later he was attracted by the ideals of the Revolution and joined the Red Army to fight for the Soviet Power. After the revolution he naturally remained in Russia. In the years of “NEP” (the Lenin’s New Economic Politics) he became a "nepman". I must explain here that after the Revolution 1917 and the civil war of 1919-1920 the young socialist state lay in ruins and Lenin’s economic policy of “military communism” didn’t help. In order to restore the economy Lenin allowed small capitalist enterprises under strict control of the soviet government for the years 1921 to 1930, in the transitional period from capitalism to socialism. These years were the years of “Nep” and, as I have said father became a “nepman”, that is he owned a hair salon. His salon was very cosy and I loved it to sit there and watch my father work. In later years I never saw such richly furnished hairdresser’s anymore. At home father would sing sometimes very sad songs about homesickness. I was too young to understand why my father was so sad, but the songs penetrated my heart. Once he told me: “When you become a grown-up girl, we shall go out together”. Poor father! His dream was not destined to come true. I was ten years old when he was arrested. We never learned where and when he was executed. Mother tried to find out something about his fate, but she was told not to be interested in it. Mother was so frightened that she burned all father’s photographs. Luckily, only one little photo remained which I was wearing in a medallion all my life close to my heart. That is all that was left from my father. This happened in 1937, in the year of mass repressions. Father was not guilty of anything; he only asked permission to go to Poland to see his family. The tragic fate of my father was influencing the whole of my life. I had to pretend that I didn’t know my father. This was necessary to be able to study and to work. In order to enter an institute or university or get a decent job it was obligatory for every soviet citizen to write a detailed biography about yourself, your parents and near relatives. I always felt sorry for people who had a big family. It so happened that I changed places of living several times during my life. And each time I had to begin a new job, which always meant again filling in big questionnaires and again writing my biography. So I had to write that I never knew my father. I don’t know if the officials who read my biography, believed my story, but it seemed to work. Nevertheless, I was for the whole life afraid to be exposed and a feeling of guilt was always there. Now I’ll tell about my Mother. She was born in Rostov-Don in a poor Jewish family. Mother looked a real biblical beauty with luxuriant hair and transparent green eyes. She grew up in the house of rich relatives. She finished private ballet school and was dreaming about future happy life. Then she met my father. Her parents were against this marriage because Father was much older than she. So Mother ran away from home and married my father. She was happy at first, but her life changed very much after my Father’s arrest. She had to bring up alone two children: my brother Boris and me. Before World War II she worked as a bookkeeper at a factory but during the war at different places. Her salary, as well as the salary of all ordinary soviet people was always very small. We were often hungry and could not buy good clothes. In spite of this Mother never doubted that our soviet state was the model of social justice and therefore the best in the world. She believed every word written in the newspapers. I must also say that Mother had a dominant character and my brother and I never contradicted her or criticized her opinions. As a result, I was very shy for a long time and it was always difficult for me to make independent decisions in crucial moments of my life. Mother had four aunts: two in Moscow and two in Rostov. They were all very rich before the Revolution of 1917. Their families owned factories and plants. After the Revolution the Soviet Power confiscated all their factories and all the men of this family were either killed or sent to Siberia, where they also perished. Mother’s aunts had a brother - my grandfather. He was not harmed by the new power, because he was a poor tailor and lived with his family in a basement of a big house. In this family my Mother was born. Grandfather was a cheerful blue-eyed man. He was very kind and gentle. He also had a fine sense of humour and used to tell us funny stories. One night when he was young he went out with some students and they put a bottle of vodka and a bunch of “bubliki” (a kind of cheap scones) in the hands of a statue of the tsar. He also told us how GrandMother used to go to the market in tsarist time having only one rubble in her pocket. It was enough to buy food for the whole family. There were even five kopecks left for a tramp who helped her to carry the heavy basket. Mother was Grandfather’s favourite daughter and I think he helped us with money. As I have said, there lived two Mother’s aunts in Rostov: Aunt Zhenya and Aunt Olya. We were great friends with Aunt Olya. She had a big stone house in the outskirts of Rostov and four servants. She also had a henhouse and in general in spite of the soviet regime she was comparatively rich. Before the Revolution of 1917 she was christened to marry Uncle Sasha, who belonged to Russian nobility. After the Revolution Aunt Olya divorced him and married director of a big plant. I must say in her defence that Uncle Sasha remained to live in the house and Aunt Olya continued to take care of him because he was not quite healthy. Aunt Olya often came to see us and always brought with her tasty things and little presents. She was a beautiful plump woman with rosy complexion. People were often staring at her when we were walking together. Aunt Olya had no children and I was to be her heiress. From my early childhood I remember how my brother and I used to play on a carpet and we also kept our toys there. We lived not far from the railway-station. While playing in the yard I could often hear the long drawling sound of train’s hooting and my heart was standing still and sinking somewhere away. Possibly, it was a foreboding because for the whole of my life I was travelling from one place to another. In summer we would go with Mother to our dacha in a horse-drawn carriage and I liked to listen to the sound of the horse’s hoofs. I preferred to live in small towns afterwards where you could still see, if not carriages, at least carts drawn by horses. Later on Mother used to send my brother and me to the country with a kindergarten. At that time I liked to retell to other children fairy-tales by Pushkin and when I became a school-girl I used to retell to Boris books on history and geography. And so, my brother and I were growing up without father. We became very poor living on Mother’s small salary. Sometimes we looked with Boris at beautiful toys in the shop-windows dreaming to buy some of them one day. Dreams remained dreams, but who knows what is better: to have or to dream. I began to keep my diary when I was ten years old. I also attended a literary club for children instructed by a young writer Anatoly Safronov. The writer was a stout man wearing a white Russian shirt called “kosovorotka”. He became a prominent soviet writer afterwards. I was beginning to write short stories and wanted to become a writer. I was also reading a lot. My first big book was “The adventures of Tom Sawyer” by M. Twain and I read it with delight. Later on, I was fascinated by Dickens and I think his books influenced my character. They taught me to be compassionate, believe in kindness and in justice. Rostov was very beautiful before World War II with its romantic city garden and cosy green streets. There were not many cars at that time and the whole atmosphere was peaceful and quiet. You could see many pretty girls and beautiful women fashionably dressed. In spring the whole town was soaking in the fragrant scent of blossoming acacias. In the warm evenings people were walking round the streets and sometimes dancing to some music. We, children liked to sit on the pavement near our house on such evenings. We were also fond of running around the streets when it rained, also in storms, when there was thunder and lightning. It was a wonderful feeling of lightness and happiness just because you existed. It was like having wings. Everything is so miraculous in childhood: the tasty crackling of snow under your feet, the rustling of yellow autumn leaves and the warmth of the sun in summer. In spite of the outward poverty of our life, we were happy. Happiness was inside us. Books made me a dreamer. I was dreaming among other things to learn horse riding. I managed only to ride a donkey once in a zoo. That donkey had a taste for freedom because he suddenly ran away from the man who was to accompany me during the ride, and was tearing straight through the bushes and trees as long as he liked it. I don’t know why I didn’t fall down and on the whole I liked the experience. My biggest dream was to become a ballerina. Mother had studied at a private ballet school together with her rich cousins before her marriage. Afterwards she played and danced in an amateur theatre in the evenings. Naturally, I was crazy about ballet. At the age of seven I began to go to a ballet school for children and the same year I was put to hospital to have my hernia cut out. For some unknown reason the doctors cut out my appendicitis and hernia was cut out when I was nine. After the second operation Mother did not allow me to return to ballet school. Since then, she called me a weak child and protected me from any physical activity, which made me really weak as a result. Just before the war we had a guest from Leningrad, a young far relative, Fima by name. He was handsome, tall, shapely and was wearing glasses. Mother told me he was my future husband. I think she made this choice because Fima was Jewish, was working as an engineer and was supposed make a good career. He was ten or fifteen years older than me, but Mother thought it was not bad. Fima stayed with us for several days. Most of the time, he was talking about something with Mother. Once he sat down near me, looked into my eyes and said I had beautiful eyes and it would be a pity if I spoiled my eyesight and have to wear spectacles. Listening to this I thought that I already began to spoil my eyes by reading too much in bed, but said nothing. When Fima was leaving, Mother told me to accompany him a little. So, I walked with him for a while and after I said goodbye, Fima took my face into his hand and kissed me as grown-ups kiss children. I was about twelve years old at the time and was not interested in future husbands. We never saw Fima again. He was killed at the front during World War II. In June 1941 I was in a pioneer camp. All soviet children had to become pioneers at the age of ten or eleven. It was an organization, which helped school to teach children communist ideology. And it was a big crime not to be a pioneer. We had to wear red ties and sit at very dull meetings. That is all I remember. So, I was in a pioneer camp in June 1941. We got up early in the morning, did our morning exercises, had our breakfast and then worked in the fields. In our free time we marched to the seaside. We were marching for a long time and then could swim in the sea for a few minutes. There were other activities, but I forgot all about them. We were also obliged to work sometimes. In spite of many restrictions life amongst beautiful nature was very nice after our unhealthy town flat. I still remember that unusual feeling of happiness in my whole body when I woke up in the mornings. One day all the children of the camp were gathered for a meeting and we were told that a war with Germany began. I didn’t understand then what the war meant for us, but for some reason I began to cry. On returning to Rostov I saw crowds of refugees on the streets and everybody said: “Poor people! “ When first bombings began, we, children, would run out of our houses to see how bombs were falling down. Soon curiosity changed into fear. During one of the air raids my brother and I were in the basement of our grandMother. The bombs were falling flat somewhere very near us with a horrifying hissing. Another time we were at home with Mother when a bomb hit the big tree near our house. Our house was shaking terribly, the windows were blown out, the walls and the ceiling were cracking. We thought we were going to die. Since then I could never forget the hissing of falling bombs and I always start when I hear unexpected sounds. Our army was retreating. The Germans were approaching Rostov. There was shooting in the streets. Russian authorities had already left the town and people were looting food-shops. They carried food while bullets were flying everywhere and many perished before they could reach their home. The youngest servant of Aunt Olya was standing near the house when her head was blown off by an accidental missile. Upon one of such days Mother said to me: “We must leave Rostov immediately. Let us go to Aunt Olya and ask her to go with us”. And we went across the whole city in spite of the shooting. Aunt Olya’s second husband was already in Moscow because the whole plant was evacuated there. Aunt Olya had gone to see him and found out that he was having a love affaire with her young niece. So she had returned to Rostov. She refused to be evacuated with us. The first occupation of Rostov by Germans didn’t last long. It cost Aunt Olya only a few suitcases of valuable things but she survived. Mother didn’t lose time. She gathered some of our belongings into twelve big bundles and we were ready to leave. We took a train with difficulty, as it was a terrible squeezing. Nobody had any tickets and it was a freight train. Our echelon was going to Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, but my brother, being a great expert of geography, persuaded Mother to get off the train at the station Ursatyevskaya and take another train. While we were changing trains suspicious looking porters ran away with some of our bundles, including Mother’s fur coat and copybooks with my first literary attempts. I never tried to write since then except for my diaries, which are at my brother’s in Siberia now. This is how we found ourselves in a Tajik village in Uzbekistan, situated in the northern part of the Fergana Valley in Middle Asia. We lived there till spring. It was a cold and hungry winter for us. We lived in a clay hut with plenty of shelves in the walls. There was an iron stove heated by dry cotton stems brought by Mother and Boris from the cotton fields .The stove was heated in the evening, the rest of the day it was cold in the hut. We slept together on a big wooden divan. Mother and Boris worked at the collective farm, they gathered cotton. Mother thought I was too weak for this, so I stayed at home with nothing to do. The only window in the hut was closed by wooden planks and it was completely dark. Still I managed to sew something in this darkness. I don’t remember what kind of light we had in the evening. Sometimes Mother took us to the village dining-room where we ate soup with horsemeat and much pepper, served in clay bowls. At home Mother cooked a kind of broth with flour. Because of the bad nutrition and change of climate I didn’t grow anymore since that winter and remained as I was at fourteen for the rest of my life. One night we woke up among horrible roar. Then we heard Mother’s voice: “Children, get out of the hut immediately if you don’t want to die!” We ran out not knowing why we had to do it. The donkeys were crying and the earth was shaking strongly. It seemed like it would open and swallow us all. We understood it was an earthquake. We had to stay in the open for the rest of the night. That night the earth began to shake again. The huts were swaying and falling apart one by one. Our hut was also shaking but survived, only one corner gave a big crack. In the morning people began to repair the huts. Those little clay huts, which they call “kibitka”, can survive earthquake better than our big city buildings. As soon as the Red Army liberated Rostov, we were returning home. It was a hard journey in freight trains and in different echelons. We often had to sleep on the floor in overcrowded railway waiting rooms. Once we spent the whole night in the streets of Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. It was bitter cold and windy and we were painfully frozen. After travelling in this way for a long time we came at last in the beginning of April 1942 to Rostov swollen from hunger. Our house was hit by a bomb and only a heap of ruins was left. One of our former neighbours took us to her house. We called her aunt Nadya. Her husband was at the front and she lived with her two little sons. She shared with us everything she had which was not much. We used to sit around a big table and eat soup with millet. I also lived at Aunt Olya’s for some time. Later on we were given a flat in a semi-basement. There were a lot of empty flats at that time, because many people had left Rostov and not all of them returned afterwards. Mother found a job in a canteen and she used to bring for us soup, which consisted of water and a few flour balls. Soon the German army began to approach Rostov again and again Aunt Olya refused to be evacuated with us. It was a difficult departure. We were waiting for a train through the night on the square near the railway station. The square was filled up with refugees. The city was being bombed heavily. A German aircraft threw illuminating rockets and then the whole square was lighted with the people cuddled up in fear against their bundles. We took a train at dawn. The bridge over the river Don was damaged and the train was moving very slowly. Possibly it was the last echelon. Mother thought that the Germans would not stay in Rostov long and she did not want to go far. That is why we left the train at the Nevynomysskaya station and lived in this Cossack village for several days in a house of a lonely woman. Those were quiet days except for one occasion when a Russian officer suddenly appeared in our room and was running after my Mother with a gun. Mother ordered me to hide under the bed, while she was trying to get rid of the man. Eventually the man left. We couldn’t stay in that village long as the front was drawing nearer and we had to move further to Nalchik. But as soon as we came to Nalchik, we had to leave it immediately, because the Germans were nearing it and people it in panic. Many were leaving on foot. We left it with difficulty and for some time travelled in a platform for shifting cargoes. Naturally such platforms are able to overturn and we overturned once and fell on the ground together with our belongings. Lucky enough this happened during one of the stops, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this story now. We were travelling in this open platform for several days under the scorching sun and I had sunstroke, because my hair had been cut and I was without a hat. A young captain travelling with us brought us some water during a stop and even a watermelon. He also gave me some asperine and after some time I was well again. Having cured me he asked me to marry him. I told him I was only fifteen. To this he said he was only twenty one, so he could wait. He also told me he was going on leave to recover because he was wounded. He gave me his address and asked me to write to him. I refused to write, but took the address, which I lost afterwards. I met this boy in Moscow several years later in a hair salon. He had the Order of the Hero of the Soviet Union on his chest and only one leg. After the platform we were going in a wagon for poultry, therefore it was two-storied and you could only sit there. Later on we travelled in a usual freight carriage, but it was so crowded that we had to stand most of the time. I don’t remember why we had to change trains all the time; probably it was the only way to move on. Nobody ever knew when the train might stop and for how long. During one of such stops in the steppe Mother sent Boris to buy some scones. There were several people selling them near the train. But they were sold so quickly that there were no more left for my brother. Then he saw a crossed-eyed man with scones standing on the other side of the train. And Boris crawled under the carriage to reach the man because those freight wagons had steps only on one side. He bought the scones and at the same very moment the train began to move slowly without hooting. Boris had to crawl under the wheels of the moving train… It was an instant and subconscious decision. Boris said afterwards that he didn’t even had time to get frightened. He knew he might not survive if he remained in that steppe . The last three days of our travelling we didn’t eat anything, because the train was crossing a desert and there was nothing to buy. That desert with its endless waves of pure untouched yellow sand was very beautiful. After that our echelon was moving along the border with Iran. I saw fantastically winding trees and the river Araks. At last the train stopped at the station of Dzulfa. The frontier-guards gave us a very tasty soup with bread. After some rest our echelon was divided: some carriages were sent to Tbilisi and some – to Erevan. We came to Erevan, the capital of Armenia. Erevan met us with warm weather, very tasty water and malaria, from which we were suffering for some time. At first we lived in overcrowded barracks for women and children,. My grandfather, who came with us, died in Erevan of hunger and homelessness. Usually we shared our meagre meals with him, but we didn’t know where he lived. Later we received a little clay hut full of all kinds of unpleasant insects. When Mother found a job at a factory of tinned food, we hired a decent flat. Mother often brought for us sweet treacle. Boris and I could go to school. I was fifteen years old and already had my first boyfriend. He was seventeen, very good-looking and studied at school for aviators. His name was Onik and he lived nearby. I felt extremely uncomfortable in his presence, so we went out together with my best friend Lydia. Later on, when we returned to Rostov, Onik wrote many letters to me. I corrected his mistakes with red pencil and sent those letters back to him. Onik didn’t know Russian so well. I am ashamed to think about it now, but then I was too proud because I had many admirers at school. Once I asked one of them to jump out of the window and he did. Lucky enough our classroom was on the first floor and not higher. I have no idea whether I was born light-minded or was spoiled by my dear Mother. Nevertheless I was always serious about my studies. As soon as our army liberated Rostov, we were going home. Mother simply could not live without Rostov. This time there was a real passenger train and we had tickets. We walked to the railway station accompanied by our friends and neighbours. Onik was allowed to kiss my cheek. Maybe I had to marry Onik afterwards and live happily ever after without adventures. But you cannot escape your fate. When we arrived at Rostov at the end of August in 1943, I expected to see the railway station, but I saw only ruins everywhere and amidst the ruins stuck out the rim of the railway station clock. The whole city was a terrible sight, but our new house was not destroyed. There were streets where only walls of houses remained with black holes in place of the windows. The street loud- speakers were broadcasting songs about love, war and death. People used to gather around these loudspeakers to hear news from the front. There were also pickpockets never losing their time. Once I had to open my bag and show there was no money in it. And the thief went away from me. Rostov was always famous for thieves. There lived a family of pickpockets in our big house and Mother-thief gave us a valuable advice, she said: “Never keep anything but a handkerchief in your pockets”. She was even proud of her profession. According to her, it was a very humane profession, because they took only what they found in pockets and never touched flats. On returning from Erevan we learned very bad news about our grandMother. She was killed during one of the bombings. But something much more terrible happened. When we went to see aunt Olya, we heard how she died. She was taken with other Jews. Her first husband Uncle Sasha was Russian, but he went with her. The Germans buried them all in the ground alive. And it was painful for us to hear about it, we also knew we could have been buried alive together with aunt Olya if we had stayed in Rostov during occupation. Mother saved us from this horrible death. Neighbours of Aunt Olya also told us that the ground where they were buried was moving for a long time afterwards… We also heard from the neighbours that some of aunt Olya’s belongings could be seen in many nearby houses. Then we knew who helped the Germans to kill Aunt Olya. By and by our life became more or less normal. Our school friends liked to come to our house, sometimes we danced to the sound of gramophone. Boris and I had a friend, Petya by name. I remember my birthday celebrated by the three of us. It was cosy in the semi-darkness of the warm room, heated by a stove with coals. We were eating roast meat with potatoes and telling to each other mysterious stories. One day Petya and Boris went somewhere. Boris returned very late and for three days he didn’t speak. Afterwards we learned that they found a missile in the outskirts of the town and it exploded. Petya was torn to pieces and brother was thrown off by blast. Since then I have kept the postcard given to me on my birthday by my little friend Petya. It was difficult for Mother to bring us up, she earned little money. That is why she was often involved in various dubious commercial undertakings, which ended badly as a rule, also on account of her inexperience. So Mother had to send Boris to a military school where he was provided for. After that Mother began to think about my future. During our first evacuation Boris and I didn’t go to school, so we lost one year of studies. That meant I needed three more years to finish school. Mother couldn’t wait so long. And she made a daring decision: she decided that I could enter a Pedagogical Institute. I didn’t want to be a teacher, I wanted to be a journalist, so I cried bitterly, but obeyed. Thus I entered the Rostov Pedagogical Institute at the age of almost sixteen. My school friend Lyda and I became the youngest students of the Faculty of Foreign Languages of that Institute. Of course only in those war-time years when there were not so many students, it was possible to enter an institute so easily and without any documents. Lyda and I studied in the same group and we were inseparable. Most of the time we were hungry. Mother could give me a piece of bread and a tiny piece of butter for the whole day, but that was not so important, studying was important for us. I must say Lyda and I were fascinated by the English language and we became the best students in the group. Being a student turned out not difficult at all. There were other difficulties: we were studying in cold buildings without any heating. Our hands were freezing, sometimes even ink was frozen. We didn’t take off our coats in winter. Some of the girls could not endure this and left the Institute. I never missed a single lesson or a lecture. So ended my childhood. In spite of my sixteen years I was not ready for a grown-up life and was to make many mistakes. But that is another story. |
Please use Nina’s 
for your comments. Thank you!
If you are interested in the complete book, please mention this in the guestbook.
| Below you find 2 photographs. The first of Nina on the right with her mother en brother Boris. The second photograph shows Nina (below, right) with the children of her class during school in Armenia. |
 |
|
|