“Don’t take peace and freedom for granted. You must defend them.”

Elena Shtrum was born in Kiev on 23 May 1923. Her mother was a doctor, her father a theoretical physicist.

The night of 23 to 24 March 1936 was to profoundly change Elena’s life. She was lying in her bed as something terrible happened: Her father was arrested.

Later, she learned that Moscow had instructed to arrest twelve members of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Her father was one of them.

The last time she saw him was in prison.

She did not learn until much later that, on 22 October 1936, her father and 36 other prisoners were shot dead near Kiev by the Soviet NKVD secret service for alleged treason and counter-revolutionary activities.

From now on, the Shtrum family was considered an “enemy of the people”. The following year, the NKVD banned Elena’s mother to live in the small town of Schenkursk where she worked as a paediatrician.

Yet, fear started to spread: Rumor had it that the children of those women banned from the cities during the Great Terror were to be taken away from their mothers and be sent to orphanages. Her mother decided to send Elena to Moscow instead.

In Moscow, she stayed with her aunt and grandmother. In the end, the neighbours found out that she was the daughter to an “enemy of the people”. Thus, she could no longer stay with her aunt.

Elena went to Kiev to live with her other grandmother who died one month after Elena arrived. From now on, Elena who was only 15 at that time, was left on her own. Yet, she says “there are always good people, no matter how bad the times” and to that motto she sticks.

In June 1941, at the age of 18, Elena finished secondary school. Only three days later, the war began. In July, she left Kiev with her two aunts and her little cousin to flee from the German invasion. They caught a freight train and travelled to Kazan where Elena’s aunt, a math teacher, soon found a job as and a place to live. Elena stayed with her and took up her studies.

She worked in a military hospital in the mornings and went to lectures in the afternoons. Her boss supported her very much. Elena regards her as one of the good people in bad times.

In a Red Army offensive against the German Wehrmacht, the hospital was deployed to the front lines and Elena followed along. In 1944, she returned to Kiev that had been liberated on 6 November 1943.

Elena remembers very well when the war ended on 9 May 1945: People were celebrating in the streets.