CHAPTER 14

We did not move to the seaside that summer and Zyama and I started studying for our university entrance examinations. Suddenly I got very sick. I realize now that I had an acute form of stomatitis: my gums were all inflamed, I had sores on my gums and my lips and, in addition to everything, I had a sore throat; I must have suffered from tonsillitis as well. My temperature was over 40 degrees and I was even delirious from time to time. I saw Mother's concerned face and heard her speaking to the doctor who said that "this was either because she had fresh milk or strawberries". I do not remember how long I had been sick. After I got better I was very weak and had dizzy spells. I thought I would never get better, yet I had to study: the university exams were getting closer.

We knew that it was hard to get into university and yet the three of us, members of the Eidus family: Zyama, Yoka and I, all decided to study chemistry. We did not think then that because of the unofficial 'numerus clausus' (the customary restriction on the number of Jewish students to be accepted into university that came to 5% of the total number of admitted students) there was hardly a chance that the three of us would be admitted to the same faculty. This is exactly what happened: only Yoka was admitted while Zyama and I had failed.

I felt rather awful on the day I learned about it: I had always been an excellent student and there I was: left outside the university walls. Yet, there was nothing to be done about that. This was when Mother suggested that I should attend a course for kindergarten teachers, which was then known as the Froebel's Course (named after F.Froebel, 1782-1852, the well-known German pedagogue, who became famous for his own system of pre-school education). This is how I became a "frebelichka' (as the female graduates of these courses were called in Russian – Tr.)

This is what my school year looked like: in the mornings I took care of little Inna and after lunch I attended the course. I liked everything there: the lectures, the painting lessons, the fretwork lessons, working with cardboard cuttings, etc. We did our practical work in the municipal Russian-language kindergarten. It was run by some charity and the children there mostly came from poor families. I still remember most of the games and songs we had used there and many of the projects we did. In some way I had "found myself" there: it was just the right place for me.

In the spring of 1934 we started working on our final projects. Mine was "The Flight to the Stratosphere". Such a flight had just taken place and I decided to base my project on that event. I had to make a balloon, and several dolls: there were two fliers and a woman with a child seeing them off to their flight. They taught us at the course how to make dolls and the rest I had to produce myself. I am not at all sure I would have managed all by myself, but I got help from Harry Yorsh, who was then an architecture student, I think. (After the war Harry became a well-known cartoonist.) The balloon base, the 'skeleton' of the balloon itself, the "launching pad" with grass and sand on it – all these were his work. I made the trees and the four dolls. I did not know how to sew at all then, but I was good with my needles: I knitted very nice clothes for all the dolls. When all the projects were exhibited later my "Flight" attracted all the attention. It was also quite "photogenic" so the photographer of "Tonight", one of the city newspapers, chose it for his paper report. I remember the picture very well. All our friends and acquaintances spoke about it, but I thought that my project received much more fame than it deserved: there were projects there that had more work and effort invested in them. However, I realized that all the other students also got help from their husbands, friends and acquaintances. The projects were simply much too good…

May 1934. The Summer of 1934

The 15 of May 1934 was the date of the Fascist coup in Latvia. For me it meant that the underground activities will become even more dangerous and our lives will become even harder.

The courses ended and our family once again moved to the seaside. We again ran a "pension" somewhere in Jaundubulti. Zyaka and I were again studying hard to prepare ourselves for the entrance exams to the university. He was planning to study chemistry and I planned to study biology. We were working hard trying to memorize Latvian grammar: we wrote it all up in verse. We had a very good private tutor in Latvian and we kept writing compositions for each of her lessons. We studied the other subjects by ourselves.

In the meantime, I organized a children group for the afternoons and I took care of five children. Unfortunately, no pictures of me with the children had survived. However, some pictures of all of us who had met at the beach that summer did survive. There was quite a lot of us, members of the underground and members of the semi-underground, who met at the beach, walked there, argued there, fell in love there and whatever else we did. Despite the complicated conditions life seemed full of light, fun and goodness. There seemed to be nothing threatening around and if there was – one did not feel any fear… We wrote funny songs and funny verses, gave each other apt and sarcastic nicknames and our "heart-to-heart" talks were full of philosophical musings, frankness and sincerity. It appeared that we did not need any food or drink and all we felt was a sense of our lives being full of something important, something significant. We realized that every one of us (or almost every one of us) was active in the underground, but this subject never came up when we all met.

The summer of 1934 was a lovely summer full of fun. Here I am first on the left in the first row. Misha Turgel is right next to me. (We shall be married in a year's time.) Second on the left in the second row is Lazik. He fell in battle fighting with the partisans. Our Tamara is in the middle of second row, she is wearing a black bathing costume. Yasha Shmuilovich is "making a pass" at Hanze Barenbaum. She died of typhoid during the evacuation…

We were still living near the seaside, but we already knew that we shall not being going back to our apartment at No. 2 Dzirnavu St., that we shall be moving into a new one. I was due to turn 20 in September and all this together, my age, our new apartment and my entrance into university, all this looked like "a new period in my life".

This is a picture taken, I think, after I had passed my entrance exams to the university. It was taken on the 19th of August1934. The girl on my left is Fanya Berkovich.

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