Grandma, part 1

I am writing about my grandma, for no better reason than that we got drunk with Anu and Anu told me to. Was gonna write about her at some point anyway, in loving memory, of course, but also rather irreverently.

OK, folks, meet Lyubov Izrailit nee Gurevich, born in Vitebsk on March 23, 1918, and dead in Boston on July 20, 2001. Daughter of doctor Fayvish Gurevich and dentist Ester-Dvoira "Vera" Gurevich. (Guess who I was named after?) And no, Fayvish and Ester-Dvoira were not siblings, first cousins or second cousins. Gurevich is just a common name over there, or rather was. Fayvish was known in his time for being a doctor, a rabbi's son, a head of a department in Vitebsk university and a voluntary participant in both world wars (quite unusual in a family where all other men have
always promptly become temporarily gay upon hearing of the army). Ester-Dvoira was a dentist and at some point a KGB officer. Well, at least somebody tortured KGB with a drill. But more of them later.

In 1918, when Fayvish was 30 and Ester-Dvoira 25, they gave birth to the little Lyuba. Not having learned from experience, 6 years thereafter they gave birth to the little Frida, too. After that they apparently figured it out.

Grandma lived a reasonably happy childhood, eventually went to high school, spending free time with a girl named Mira Ratner who lives nowadays in Pennsylvania, and a guy named Samuil "Mulya" Izrailit, who eventually became her boyfriend. After the high school they both moved to Leningrad, Lyuba to study medicine and Mulya engineering. One day in 1939 they both sneaked out of their respective classes and went to the population register office where some office workers figured what they were up to without asking and showed them which office registers marriages.

Sometime during the same year grandma got pregnant and arranged for an abortion. Abortions were made illegal by Stalin a while before, but it was no trouble for a medical student to arrange for one. At the last moment grandma changed her mind due to fears of a possible future infertility, and thus I got an aunt. In later years when grandma was arguing with her offspring, including me, her ultimate argument was "I could have had an abortion and then you wouldn't even be here arguing", although it was obviously too late for that. Her penultimate argument was, incidentally, "I am a doctor and I know better". I don't know whether she also used that on people who were doctors themselves.

She got a bad grade in some class on account of giving birth during the final exam, even though she did not actually give birth in class. The next year she and grandpa graduated. And then the war started.