Ada Dal, her husband Mihail Ben, and her grandson Alexei Zaslavsky

Ada Dal, her husband Mihail Ben, and her grandson Alexei Zaslavsky

This is a picture of my husband Mihail Ben, my grandson Alexei Zaslavsky and me in Jerusalem in 1997. My husband and I got married in 1958. We didn't have a big wedding party. My husband moved in with me into the same apartment that my father received in 1944. There were two other tenants - two elderly Jewish women. There were two rooms on the second floor - one was ours and one was theirs; there was also a kitchen. An old wooden staircase led to the second floor. There were no comforts: no bathroom or toilet. In the early 1960s we decided to do major renovations in the apartment in order to build a toilet. The issue of a bathroom wasn't even discussed. We all washed ourselves in a big pot in the kitchen. When we were repairing the walls we found some money from the time of the Revolution of 1917. Our daughter Elena was born in 1964. We lived a very modest life - at that time engineers had lower salaries than workers of the lowest qualifications. In 1966 we received a two-bedroom apartment in the Khrushchovka building. It seemed like paradise to us. We went to the theater and to concerts. We didn't celebrate Soviet holidays. On days off we used to meet with friends, go for walks or to the theater. We went to the Crimea on vacation. My husband's hobby was playing chess. He participated at contests and had degrees and categories and became the 1st Ukraine grandmaster in chess competitions. My stepfather died in 1969. He fell ill in 1962, a few years before he died. Mama retired to be able to look after him. After he died she dedicated herself to raising her granddaughter. My grandson Alexei was born in 1991. My husband and I were pensioners and dedicated all our time to him. My daughter earned very little and my husband and I only had our miserable pension. In 1994 my daughter was offered a job at the Industrial Technical School, which had always been her dream. She worked there for half a year and then she became repatriation consultant at the Israeli Cultural Center after passing a very difficult exam. My family is very excited about the Jewish spiritual recovery. We read Jewish newspapers and go to Jewish theaters. We have more information about Israel now. Our daughter told us a lot about it. We decided to emigrate there in 1997. We got settled in a quiet and beautiful neighborhood of Jerusalem.
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