The Secret Holocaust Diaries: The Untold Story of Nonna Bannister by Nonna Bannister, Denise George, Carolyn Tomlin Read Free Book Online

factory was furnishing the apartment at no cost to us. I suppose that it was a part of his compensation package. The apartment was located near the housing that was provided for foreign visitors and was very close to the large park called Rostov’s Theatrical Park. That is the place in Rostov that has stayed in my memories so vividly throughout my lifetime—it was a park in which Mama and I spent a lot of time together. I remember so well when we moved from Taganrog to Rostov-on-Don—I guess that I was two or two and a half years old. We rode the train from Taganrog to Rostov-on-Don, and after getting off the train, we rode on a streetcar to the place in which we would live for the next few years.
    It was a large apartment complex with three buildings positioned so that it would look like a circle of houses with a large yard inside the circle. There in the yard were many flower beds with a fountain in the middle. On the opposite side of the apartment buildings (to complete the circle), was another large building, which was a police station (militia station). I am sure that it was a police station because there were many uniformed policemen at all times, and they had a fenced-in area with police dogs inside. Around the apartments, there was a tall wooden fence with three large gates (one between each of the buildings), and I remember that many times they would open those gates to let trucks drive up to our section and dump coal and wood down the chute under our kitchen window—it was the way down to the cellar. Each apartment dweller or family had their own cellar, and their section was a two-story one (something like America’s townhouses). Our apartment was on the end of the building, and therefore it was the largest one.
    We also had a private balcony—the rest of the apartments were smaller, and two families had to share the balconies and patios. I guess this was because Papa had a good job at the factory and many foreigners visited us regularly. On the back of our section, there was a hall-walkway (past the stairs to the basement, which led to the back door and out into the small backyard). It was fenced in and looked like a small garden with some trees and flowers. The upstairs bedrooms and the downstairs living room faced the backyard, and the bathroom, kitchen, and foyer faced the front entrance. We children spent most of our time playing in the backyard, but occasionally we would play with the rest of the children in the main square of the apartments.
    There was also a small room with a large window; Mama called it her art pavilion. It was a place where Mama did her painting and sketching—there was an easel with brushes and oil paints, and there was always a framed canvas in the process of becoming one of Mama’s paintings.
    She also spent a lot of time at her piano or with her violin. There was also a bandstand, and during the Russian holidays, there was a band playing music. On the weekends (Saturday and Sunday), all the people from all the apartments were rounded up to work around the flower beds and do whatever else needed to be done to maintain the apartments. This was called “friendly labor,” mainly to have something to occupy the people on Saturdays and Sundays—especially since the churches were closed down and people were discouraged from worshiping gods of any religion (Jews or Christian).
    Most of the visitors to this extraordinary factory were from Germany, France, Spain, Sweden, and Norway—but there were some from America, England, and the rest of the European countries. The Russians were proud of their new factory, which produced heavy equipment and farm machinery, and they kept it open to any visitors from the West. Because Papa spoke several languages, he was very hopeful that he could still work out plans to get his family out of Russia. We had many foreign visitors come to our apartment and visit with Mama and Papa. They went out in the evenings, and sometimes they would take us along