Miroslava Metlyaeva (Lukyanchikova)
My name is Miroslava Metlyaeva (Lukyanchikova). I have a PhD in Philology and a Master of Psychology, and am also a member of the Writers’ Union of Moldova. Currently, I am the head of the Science Sector at the Itsik Manger Jewish Library in Chisinau. The topic of World War II concerns all Jews in this eastern region of Europe. It affected my family as well and still haunts everyone 80 years later.
I come from a Jewish Bessarabian family. My mother, Edie Rorer, was born to Shmuel and Feiga-Riva Rorer. Before the war, she received her education in a Romanian school and, at the same time, in a Jewish school. Then she graduated from the French Lyceum Jeanne d’Arc in 1937, receiving a bachelor’s degree. She spoke 8 languages. Everything was going well for her: she worked as a teacher and had a nice apartment.
Soon the war began. Having collected the necessary things, my mother, grandmother and sister Beyla-Bruha fled to Tiraspol, but the nazi were already nearby. Escaping across the railway bridge, my mother threw everything she had into the Nistru River and crossed to the other bank with my grandmother and sister. Bessarabia, their home, was left behind. Ahead were evacuation, wanderings, hunger and cold.
Finally, the Nazis was defeated, and my mother and her relatives returned to Chisinau. Only part of the house where they lived remained. They settled there in two surviving rooms on Pavlov Street. Grandmother died from all the hardships. My mother found work as a teacher in one of the villages, and we, my brother and I, stayed with Aunt Beyla in Chisinau, where we attended kindergarten. I was 4 years old and my brother was 2 when the disaster happened. A police officer began to lay claim to our apartment. “Why do you need so much space!” he shouted. It’s strange, but I still remember his angry scream. And when we went with my aunt to visit my mother, he broke the lock and moved into our apartment. When we returned home a few days later, he, this police officer, had already moved in.
So our family was freed from their place of residence. And no one stood up for us. So we were forced to leave Chisinau and go to the village for many years and rent small rooms with clay floors from peasants. What happened next, I described in my book “Puzzles”, which received a diploma at an international competition in Germany in 2015.
