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Family Is All That Matters 110 Completely committed to her family, Rosa will do whatever it takes to survive and there is no sacrifice she is not prepared to endure. Her beloved husband, Moisey, had died only a few months before she was interviewed. His absence in the small, two-bedroom apartment was palpable. Photographs of Rosa and Moisey, as well as their children and grandchildren, covered every surface not already filled by Moisey's artwork. Rosa's very first memory perhaps foreshadowed the occupation she ultimately chose. She remembers being about four years old and sick in her bed. "My father came into my room and applied his lips to my forehead to tell my temperature," she says, smiling at the memory. "His lips were cool against my hot forehead. It was very comforting." Maybe it was at this moment that the possibility of becoming a physician and being able to provide such comfort to others first occurred to Rosa. When Rosa was a little older, she was impressed by the family doctor. "He had an enormous influence on me," she says. When he came to the house he always took time to talk to Rosa, influencing her to become a doctor. Unfortunately, his own fate was tragic. When the Nazis invaded Russia, the Jewish doctor knew that he and his family would be sent to concentration camps. Rather than let that happen, the doctor poisoned his family and then himself. But before the Nazis and full impact of the Russian Revolution swept over the Volsun family, their life was good. Rosa remembers with fondness the beautiful house in which she was born and spent the first years of her life. "It had marble columns and stairways, with lots of mahogany furniture, and large silver samovars, and silverware," she recalls. Compared to the lives of many of their neighbors, the Volsun family enjoyed an enviable level of comfort and privilege. Everyone knew that the Volsuns worked hard and honestly for what they had. Above: Rosa Volsun Udler, 2006 Previous page: Moisey, Rosa, David, and Yakov Udler in Ungen, Moldova, 1950. Rosa remembers being evicted om that house by anti-Semitic police. "They threw everything we owned into the street," Rosa says with bitterness in her voice. Her father Shlomo went to work as a manual laborer in a furniture factory. "It was a shame because my father was very educated," Rosa says. Shlomo had earned two rabbinical diplomas om universities in Warsaw and Bucharest; now he was reduced to a common laborer. "Both my father and mother sacrificed for the sake of the children," Rosa says with a tear. "They kept us alive." When Shlomo was in Moscow without the family om 1933 to 1935, Rosa attended a Jewish school in Gorodok. When the family joined him and moved to Russia, Rosa started Russian school in Moscow. She, like Iosif aer her, became the victim of many jokes because she spoke very poor Russian. She grew up speaking mostly Yiddish and Ukrainian. "Many of the children laughed and insulted me," Rosa recalls, "but I used the summer to learn Russian, and by the time classes started again the following fall everything was fine." Aer middle school, Rosa honored the ill-fated doctor she had looked up to by beginning her medical training. She started by enrolling in a school that trained physician's assistants. Rosa says she was not the most diligent of students, but she had a photographic memory. Even at this early age, her leadership skills stood out. Rosa was always president of the student organizations. Aer she graduated at 18, Rosa went to a small settlement near Moscow and worked as a physician's assistant. Rosa tended to patients at a small clinic and, like the doctor who inspired her, she made house calls. Rosa had been working less than a year when World War II broke out. She was immediately draed with the rank of senior military medic and sent to the vicinity of Tula, where a Soviet Army division was being formed. Soon the Germans began bombarding her position; casualties were high and supplies were low. Eventually the German army completely

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