Greetings my dear friends,
I received your letter and gift, for which I am infinitely grateful. You have become like my own [“rodnye”] and I always await your letters, as a gift from destiny. I wish you health and successes at work. I am glad that we have a new friend Sonia [NB: Sonia Kovitz is a translator and the Project Manager for The Survivor Mitzvah Project] and I wish her the best of everything.
I want to write to you about my husband. He dreamed from childhood of becoming an actor. He belonged to the Drama Club at school and in the town. In the town drama productions they included him in the “crowd scenes.” But destiny had other plans for him. The war began and he ended up in Gorky working at an aircraft factory. It was heavy, exhausting work and there was terrible hunger. After the war when he returned home, he discovered that not one of his family remained. The Germans had shot his family. He didn’t even have a place to spend the night. He and I met and within two weeks, we had married. He found work at a foundry, very high-temperature work, as a blacksmith.
But nevertheless his dream came to pass, in old age. In 1989 our town organized a Jewish community group and a Jewish theatre. They invited my husband and he played the leading role in all the productions, sang, and delivered monologs. He knew the monologs of Sholem Aleichem by heart. The theatre put on Tevye der Milchicher, in which he played Tevye. The hall was always completely filled. He succeeded in performing for 11 years. In 2001 he departed from life. Now I live alone. I miss him very much. He was a remarkable man.
Dear ones, thank for your Pesach greetings. I am sorry I didn’t succeed [in time] in giving you my Pesach greetings.
I wish you good health, great human happiness, may God watch over you all.
With love and friendship,
Anna Moiseyevna