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LEV AND MARIA’S STORY

Paullina Simons’s Tribute to Her Grandparents, Survivors of Russia’s Terrible Twentieth Century

My grandparents, Lev and Maria Handler, rad when he enty-five and she enty-one Maria was an asseines They went together for two years before they married in 1934 My father, Yuri, was born in 1936, rad on a street called Fifth Soviet, in the two roo for The Bronze Horserandparents, randfather’s parents

My grandmother was one of the very few Soviet worandfather did not want an exhausted wife co home late, and so she stayed home and took care of him, his parents, and her children She was very happy with that arrangeust of 1941, es five and two, and her in-laws, rode one of the last trains out of Leningrad They were evacuated to a sa, a hundred randfather, a skilled and essential worker, rerad His factory was quickly retrofitted to n and repair their engines

During the evacuation, randmother became separated from her children and her in-laws -- she was aboard one boat on the Volga while they traveled on another She had all the ht) and her in-laws had the docue, and the kids It was several days before they were all reunited at their designated evacuation post, but now they were broke and would rerandfather’s paycheck finally reached the village where they would live out the war

My grandrad to be with her partner of thirty years, Mikhail; but only a feeeks after the evacuation he would be dead of tuberculosis Dusia then randfather They lived there during that first terrible winter of the German blockade when half a million Soviet civilians perished frorandfather says that he only survived because of Dusia’s daily excursions across the frozen Neva River to barter with her far, however, that he would not randfather joined the Red Ar all types of engines was much in demand and he becarad for the remainder of the war, ever the survivor -- until cancer of the storandfather’s father, Wolf Lazarevich, was a professor of mathee of sixty-one During his short tiers and was so beloved that when he died they gave hi his body above their heads through the village -- and a Christian burial (although he was a Jew) My grandfather’s lifelong regret is that he never again saw his father after the day he put him on the evacuation train in 1941 Wolf was already dead by the tih to visit his farieves for his father and loves hirandparents and my father and uncle lived in Moscoith relatives while Leningrad was being rebuilt They came back to Fifth Soviet in the late 1940s and continued to live there until 1963 Both randrandfather’s mother died in 1953 of heart failure In 1962, my father, twenty-six, met my mother, twenty-two, and married her two agement) My parents continued to live separately after their wedding because there was no roorandparents’ roonant with randparents, after spending years on a waiting list, were finally given a small one-bedroorandmother And so my mother, my father, and I, remained in one room on Fifth Soviet while my uncle, my aunt, and their baby lived in the other

My parents and I left the Soviet Union for America in 1973 and randparents, now retired, randchildren terribly So in 1979 they accepted my father’s invitation to corandfather, then seventy-two, arrived at JFK carrying his prized Soviet fishing rod -- because he didn’t think they couldrods like that in America

They lived with my parents in their house for five years, and then on their own in Maine for ten For the last six they have been back on their own in my father’s house My parents and my uncle are in North Carolina In July of 2001, Lev and Maria will have been rand her eyelashes, likes to say that they’ve been "together for sixty-nine" He will be ninety-four in July and she is turning ninety in August He says, "Your grandmother may not be the most beautiful worandfather still digs his garden in the spring and plants to to bother hirandh she coht as if they were seventeen and spend every o at each other for a while, e when you two have not argued?" And randfather replied, "Yes, but that was a wasted day"

They read constantly, avidly follow current events, are hockey fanatics, watch Alish, and really enjoy Mexican soap operas translated into Russian (apparently they’re even better in translation) My grandfather has two satellite dishes so he can catch Russian prograrand in life is still so fascinating"

My grandfather says, "I won’t die until after I get your translated Bronze Horse it, then I can die"

April 2001

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PAULLINA SIMONS was born and raised in Leningrad and irated to the United States with her family in the 1970s She is the author of Tully, Red Leaves and Eleven Hours She has lived in Rome, London, and Dallas She now lives in New York City and can be reached at

[email&160;protected]

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Jacket painting: view of the Monument to Peter the Great by Vasili Ivanovich Surikov State Russian Museueman Art Library New York

Also by Paullina Simons

Tully

Red Leaves

Eleven Hours