I turned eighty years old, and suddenly I realized that if I don’t tell my story now, I never will. And my family will disappear without a trace. Meanwhile, each human life is unique and valuable in its own way. Even under seemingly similar circumstances. Remembering the stories of my grandmother (my father’s mother) and my mother, I so vividly imagined what was described in them that I began to feel them as my own memories, so what I wrote about my life so naturally merged into the general narration. I never saw my mother's parents. I never saw my father - he was arrested at 22 and shot at 23, the day before I turned one. I think it was a birthday "present". There was no connection with him, so he most likely did not know about me. I never lived with my mother. For seventeen years she was in exile and camps. But I was lucky. My grandmother, an amazingly wise and kind person, remained free. I lived with her. I called her mom, and my own mother Sonya. Grandmother’s main postulate was: “The world is not without good people.” That's how we survived.