It starts with a man named Telega, a Don kossack. In 1880's, owing to a small misunderstanding with the local authorities, a matter of banging up a geandarm over a land boundary, he was sent walking to Siberia in irons. His family went with him. Upon arriving in Irkutsk, and working his debt to society off, my illustrious ancestor settled in for a bit of trading and landowning. A large family ensued, which makes the later part of the story seem more far fetched than the soaps. I'll reserve the description of the next generation or two for a later time. And now, for the first important personages of my life, my grandparents:
Alexander Ivanovich Telegin was a public defendor for the Irkutsk region. He served in the 1930's during the hayday of Stalin and Beria. His job was saving innocent people from Beria's henchmen. He proved to be a little too good at his job, so they sent him up. For a while there, he served in the local concentration camp, making little rocks out of big ones. The official charge was "Insidious and Traitorous Contribution to underproduction of grain" by some collective farm or another. To my great regret, for I am told that Alexander Ivanovich was a remarkable man, he died of a brain tumor before I was one. He knew me, but I did not get a chance to know him. His life is the first of many debts the Soviet systems owed me.
Augusta Andreevna Nastich, later Telegin, was the principal of one of Irkutsk's first schools. She was very sharp and well educated, tough but fair. Most of all, she cared about her charges. The students liked her (some feat for a principal, no?) and paid respect well after having graduated. When the city council decided to express its appreciation to some of its most dedicated citizens, Augusta Andreevna was one of the first to recieve the title of "Distinguished Citizen". When my family left USSR in 1976, we were afraid to maintain communications with the family left behind. In those years Soviet citizens with connections abroad were still being persecuted. As a consequence, we did not know that Augusta Andreevna died of cancer in 1981. Chalk up another one for the Soviet system.
Vladimir Iosifovich Reytblatt was an engineer. He served with with some distinction in the War (WW2, that is), in the artillery. He was in the Caucasus theater of operations, and survived the war without major injury. He was a quite man. I remember him always in the background, never the life of the party. I also remember his deep, smiling eyes under bushy eyebrows. He died in 1969 of a heart attack. I don't know much about that side of the family, except that he had a sister (or nice) named Claudia. She was a large Wagnerian woman, with a voice that shatters glass, to quote Professor Higgins.
Clara Lazerevna Greenspan, later Reytblatt, was a doctor in Kiev. She specialized in pediatrics, and was quite famous in her field. She survived the 1920s by a sheer miracle. On the day that most of her family was butchered in a pogrom, she was at school. She came home to a room full of corpses, including her parents and her fiance. Only one her nephew Jack was still alive, with thirteen stab wounds. Her brother Zindl, covered the boy with his body, to protect him from the bullets. She nursed Jack back to health, and sent him to America. Her later life was not to be any easier. Her pregnancy was very difficult (she was very petit), and complications after delivery resulted in a significant loss of hearing. During the War she was evacuated to the Ural mountains with my father, 11 at the time. Yet through all the trials and tribulations she never lost her spirit, never gave up on humanity. She continued to work and care for her family and her patients. She died of cancer in 1967. Although I knew her for but a short seven years, I will never forget the love and care she lavished upon me.
All my grandparents are gone. It has been twenty years since I saw the last of them. My recollections are sketchy at best, and bits of history are mixed in with fantasies of my childhood. I will get my parents to fill in more details.