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esh out of the Pale of Settlement, dreamed of a better future for their children and constantly pushed them to excel at school and in extracurricular activities, hoping they could achieve a level of success denied to the elder generation. When the Germans invaded Russia in June of 1941, Mikhail and Aleksander were called up immediately. Their 64-year-old father was exempt om military service. The family lingered in Pavlovskiy Posad and it wasn't until October, when the Germans were knocking on Moscow's gate, that they decided to flee to Central Asia. Leib and Malka, with all five of their daughters and the two granddaughters, managed to obtain the coveted railway tickets to Samarkand, Uzbekistan. It was a four month journey in a railcar bursting at the seams with humanity. Their meager food store ran out very fast, and they had to buy bread and potatoes om the villagers on the way. During one of the stops in Kazakhstan, five members of the family— Rosa, Zhenya, Lyubov, and Zina with her daughter Raya—went out to stretch their legs, get a breath of esh air, and buy some food. The girls were not aaid of being le behind because ont-bound trains were given priority treatment, and the trains headed in the opposite direction usually had to wait at the stations for a long time. But as luck would have it, this time the train started moving in record time, and they were le behind. But they got lucky. A local ethnic Russian family in Rostov took them in, saving them om being doomed in the cold and windy winter. At one point, 16-year-old Zhenya nearly died; during a heavy snowstorm, she had le the house to fetch water om the well. The young teenager, feeble om hunger, could not handle two heavy pails suspended om the ends of a balance beam. She sank to the ground to rest a little, dozed off, and was buried by the falling snow. Fortunately, a neighbor's dog found her. Still, even in such harsh circumstances, Zhenya did not lose her zest for life and eagerly performed in military The Pale of Settlement Created under pressure to rid Moscow of Jewish business competition and "evil" influence on the Russian masses, the Pale of Settlement was created by Tzar Catherine II in 1791. The territory where Jews were allowed to live encompassed present-day Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and the Ukraine. More than 90 percent of Russian Jews were forced to live in the poor conditions of the Pale, which made up only four percent of imperial Russia. Even within the Pale, Jews were still discriminated against; they paid double taxes and were forbidden to lease land or receive higher educations. The overthrow of the Tzarist regime in 1917 led to the abolishment of the Pale of Settlement.

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