I guess it means the fly, but that my nickname has always been Mushka.

My parents called me that when I was very, very little.

My mother was from Bialystok, Poland.

She grew up in a family she had a brother and a sister An d her mother was very ill. til I found out that they were very, very much involved with Israel.

They loved the idea of Israel being a land for Jews.

And many, many of Papa's family had fled Russia and gone to what now is Israel in 1903.

Well, she must have been in her late teens, and she was very interested in the things that he brought into class about politics.

And she became very interested in what is referred to now in history as Mensheviks.

They were arrested and put into prison.

The students as well as the professors.

And she ended up in the prison in Lubyanka, along with her classmate, who was also from the same city that she grew up in, in Poland and from Bialystok.

And they were imprisoned there.

And she became very active in the prison with her with her friend.

And the friend was asked to come to a meeting, and taken away from the room and walked away.

And she was gone and gone.

And my mother said that she was very concerned, where was her, her fri And she kept waiting for her to come back.

And she looked out the window.

And when she looked out the window of thei And that was devastating to her.

So she remained a prisoner for I don't know how long.

She my mother never told me how long she was a prisoner, but after a few years she was released along with the man who had been her professor and a number of other people who were released.

And they were told that they and they could leave the country, but they were or anyone in the cities where they originally were from.

And if they did, they would be sent right back into the prison and shot.

So they did not communicate with anyone.

And they were put on a train and sent out of the country.

They ended up in Germany.

My father had been so actively involved as a Menshevik that he had really removed himself from the family in many ways, politically.

Grigory Aronson had been married but had been separated from his wife and had had custody of a child, but had turned over the child to the woman who he had been married to, and was very concerned about the child and had written to her, but had not received any answers.

My mother, it turns out, immediately raced over to the university in Berlin and asked if she could be admitted as a student.

She didn't have any money, but could she be admitted as a student because she was so anxious to get her degrees.

And they asked her what her background was.

She told them.

She was admitted and she went for two degrees, which after a few years she was able to get.

One was in early childhood education and the other was in, of all things, metallurgy.

She received the two degrees and she went to work in early childhood education.

And they became the first early childhood schools to offer availability to people who were working, and to have their children go to a full-time nursery school.

My mother had not been able to marry my father because he had not been able to really be divorced from what was his ex-wife, because he had been in prison and they never were able to officially get divorced.

So she was still using her her her maiden names.

And so she was still He had been accepted as a very successful writer and by a number of newspapers that were being published in different countries.

And he wrote about different things that had been happening, historically, in Russia and in the Soviet Union and in different things about history, the Soviet history.

And it was a very good life.

An interesting life.

And then suddenly they both were told that they have lost their jobs because of one reason.

Both of them were Jewish.

And that was the end of their working abilities.

And they were told they would have to leave the country or be imprisoned immediately.

They decided they would leave the country, but they found ou which was that she was expecting a baby.

They took a train and went into Paris.

Both of them.

They took very little but they took some things wit that they knew that they would have to Just some papers, some books, a few mementos.

The girl who had been in the hospital when my mother had been ill prior to giving birth, she showed up one day with the little boy that had been born to her.

And she came over and her little boy met me and said, oh, she's so cute.

And he loved me and I thought he was such fun because he was playing with me.

And my mom said to her, what do you do with him during the day?

And she said, I don't know what to do with him during the day becaus and I never know what to do with him.

So my mom said to her, leave him here with us and you can come anytime to visit.

She said, wonderful!

And she did.

She And his name was Lucien.

A number of people started to write to them from Russia that they were interested in c Because things were very serious and very bad in the Soviet Union and they wanted to get out.

Would it be possible to communicate with them right away and maybe move in with them?

Would it be possible for them to move in with them now?

Then people started to move in with us, people who were teachers at some of the nursery schools that had been in France, which were closed in Germany, who had been in Germany and they were running away from the Germans.

Because everybody knew about my mom from the school in Germany and they all knew her name because she had been the director.

And they all knew that we were now living in France.

And they all would send letters asking, could they come?

But could they send their child first?

And they would send their children first.

And these other children would come and they would stay for a while, and then their mama and papa would come and pick them up.

And it turned out that they were waiting for passports.

We would be hidden Jews and protected by the town, the mayor and everybody in the town.

And so that's exactly what happened.

Papa left his job working for the newspaper.

We left the house and all the people that were living with us all went their separate ways.

And Lucien, myself, and my mother all went to the town.

I have memories of being terrified but being comforted by Lucien and my mother.

We were leaving our home.

But I had my doll with me and I had Lucien holding my hand and my other hand was holding the doll and Mom was there, my mother, Mama.

We were met by a big wagon outside the town, and the wagon took us with the mayor sitting with us right to the town where we would be living.

And we went right to the house that we would be staying i I thought, except that we were taken to the barn.

And it turns out that they wanted us to live in the barn.

I didn't realize that, but we would stay in the barn.

There were two beds there, one that Lucien and I would share.

We would sleep like this, his head one way and my head the other way.

And my mom would be in the other bed.

And she would go to work, turns out every day, to the particular building that she would And Lucien and I would And we would be happy there.

And then we would come back here and we'd go into the main house where who owned the house, would have us for dinner with my mom, who would then come and we would eat dinner and have a me where we would be able to sleep and talk and be together.

And we would be happy.

When we went to school, the children other than that we came from Paris.

They knew that we had moved from Paris and that my mother had a job nearby, but they didn't know what the job was.

But the teachers must have known.

But the other kids didn't seem to know.

But we had a good time.

And after school every day we walked a little ways away from the school through a little tiny path that had flowers on either side of it.

And we walked into a church.

An about something or other that I didn't understand at all, and neither did Lucien.

But it turns out we were be But we were we didn' but we learned about it.

So we started to learn an d we learned more and more.

And eventually we would be studying about communion and we would have communion, but not right It took a while.

That was part of the school.

The school was Catholic and that was part of t And since she was working the whole day til late in the afternoon, that was part of the school training.

And I met the priest, who couldn't have been nicer and he was very sweet and he knew exactly the fact that I wasn't Catholic and he would pat me on the shoulder Other people were getting crossed all the time, but I always got patted on And then we went back to the house, Lucien and I, and we would play with the a And then we would go eat dinner and everything was fine.

And we, we enjoyed all that.

We really did and seemed fine.

And then one day, Lucien and I thought, wouldn't it be fun to go see where where Mama's working.

And we snuck into the place and Mama saw us and she got furious with us, and she came over to us and said, go home immediately.

And we got out of there very quickly and raced home.

And she later on told us, never, ever, ever, ever, ever And she was really angry with us for doing that.

And so we realized that that was very naughty.

So we never did that again.

But later on, many years later, she to that had been very dangerous, that we did that.

And I guess I realize that later.

They were all German soldiers, all in uniform.

And she was observing them and she was terrified, herself.

And she didn't want them to know that she had little children, that she was involved with.

She was terrified for us.

And so that was pretty scary.

We stayed there for a little bit over a year.

And then one day the mayor came over to our house, to actually to the barn where we were living.

And he gave my mother an open envelope.

He had read the letter.

It was a letter from Papa.

And he had gotten information that he'd got the passports.

And he was thrilled for her and thrilled for us.

But there was a very sad part to it, that Lucien did not get a passport.

And she burst into tears.

And he said, I will take you back to the train station and you will go back to Paris and I will take you back to the train station.

You will go back to Paris.

I've already called the Notre Th ey will take the little boy back.

They will take good care of him.

So that she would promise she would take an oath in front of the priest, that she would come every single other day to be with Lucien, to make sure he was happy and and and loved and kissed.

And then she came and took her back to where And then and saw Papa for the first time in over a year.

And he kissed us and was so loving.

But he also cried because Lucien wasn't with us.

And we weren't allowed to sleep in the bed because he said that there were bugs all over the bed.

He had never been able to sleep in the bed.

But so we slept on the floor.

We saw German soldiers everywhere.

And I've always been kind of nervous when I see soldiers.

I just tend to get nervous I it's not realistic for me, but I tend to get very nervous.

Even nowadays when I see soldiers, even on our side, I, I get nervous because I know they have guns and I get frightened.

I don't speak any English and neither do my parents.

So they speak Russian to each other.

I don't speak any Russian.

And so basically all I do is stutter, and which is awful.

And I have nobody to talk to and no language of any kind.

And a few days later, we're living in a in an apartment, which is furnished very simply, but nice.

It's just a room.

It has a bed, and then it has that opens up into a bed.

But no one seems to sleep in that sofa.

But my parents put me to bed in the bed and they kiss me goodnight.

And then they said that they're going to go to and I should have a wonderful sleep and they'll see me in the morning and they go out and I think, well, this is my room.

And they go outside and I go to sleep.

Unbeknownst to me, they're right outside.

And when I fall asleep, they come in and they open up the couch and then they go to sleep on the couch.

I wake up some they're sleeping there.

So I realize that this is our ro And that's how we live for quite some time.

And then my mother takes me to a school.

And I go into a building.

She speaks Russian to me.

I don't know what she's sa I speak French to her.

She doesn't answer in Fren She answers me in Russian.

I don't know what she's saying.

I'm introduced as Marie Aronson.

America, Mary.

I said Je suis Marie She says, America, Mary, Je suis Marie.

No.

America, Mary.

Je suis Marie.

And that's the whole conver And nothing else happens.

And she says, and I don't know what she's pointing to.

She's pointing to an empty chair.

So I sit and that's the whole day.

And that goes on till my mother picks me up and walks me towards home.

And as we're walking, somebody comes running out of a building and my mother and she hug.

Turns out, it's a woman that she went to school with in Germany and they know each other from graduate school and they both went to the university in Berlin.

And the woman, it turns out, knows a school where I could be accepted for no charge.

And it's a wonderful school and they will accept me and teach how to speak English and everything will be good.

My dad worked in the Russian newspaper in the Novoe Russkoe Slovo, which was a very wonderful newspaper.

And he also worked for the Jewish Daily Forward, and then he was a volunteer at Columbia University with many, many students, graduate students and undergraduate students who needed help in research and many other areas.

And he was always a compassionate person, helped other people.

He was a really good guy My mother never went back into her early childhood ed area, though I was absolutely blown away when I discover that Spock, Dr. Spock, contacted her and offered her a full year at Yale for nothing if she would come and live there and work with him and he would give her in her field and be authorized to work in Because she had the original experience that he was a specialist in, years after she had been an But she couldn't take the time to do it.

She had to earn basic money for us to live on.

So she worked as a metallurgist and she ran a lab in New York for many, many years.

And either she fell down or she sat down and looked at them and started to cry.

So and then she walked towards her bedroom.

They had a small apartment, but I grew up in that apartment.

It was on 110th Street in Manhattan.

I grew up the whole time that I was really growing up.

And she went into the room, didn't close the door, and we could hear her crying.

And my dad took my hand and he said, we're going to show respect to your mother.

And he closed the door to her room.

And I said, I want to help her.

And he said, we're going to close the and show her total respect.

Now my father knew that one of his sisters lived in St. Petersburg and that she had a daughter who also lived there.

And he contacted her.

And I ended up meeting her, which was very exciting.

Years later, I went to Russia and met her.

We never celebrated Jewish holidays and I kind of missed it, because my husband's family did.

And as the years went on in our marriage, I felt that I had missed out on an awful lot of wonderful things by not being observant of them.

And I feel very bad that I didn't get a chance to observe them.

And I have, more and more, as the years have passed observed, a lot of them.

But my father didn't observe them.

He never did.

He was very interested in Yiddish literature and Jewish life, but not religious life.

He felt that he was not a religious person at all.

He just didn't like religion.

He felt it was an escape.

I feel that I was cheated out of a sense of belong I never had family holidays where we would all get to I know many people who have memories of knowing their grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins.

I never had that.

I never had any of t I've missed out on that.

I have no memories of being with families in their homes and observing other people's lifestyles that were family.

That's something that I've never had in my own family.

But I've been close to over the years, and but that's the way it's been.

I'm very close to my children.

Al And they're close to each other, which has meant an awful lot to me, that they're very close to each other.

I like people.

I really do like people.

And I just I don't know.

I really d other people think.

I, I like to reach out to people that look like they're lonely because I know that there have been times in my life when Not lately and not in the last many years.

Because I've been very fortunate.

I was married to a guy that I fell in love with right away.

And I've always been lucky because I've always loved Fred and I think he's always been kind of loving to me And I'm very fortunate with my kids.

They're terrific.

And they're loving.

And they they have wonderful children.

I think it's so awful when I hear about or people that are intolerant of other people.

I think it's just so awful.

It's so sad.

It's so pathetic t It's just so heartbreaking.

I hope that people who hear about stories, how they've affected people who've lost, families, who've lost so many people, they realize how sad it's been for them, how how alone they feel.

There's so much that you can do when you interact with other people You can show compassion.

You can show kindnes There's so much that you can do for each other that it doesn't take much to do.

Just to be kind, just to be kind to each other.

My folks were always kind to strangers.

Always.

And I try to be.

I try to be.

I don't understand when people aren't.

I'm not talking about just giving money.

I'm talking about being kind.

Compassion.

I have faith in people.

I think if you dig into your own heart you can discover that you have compassion there.

If you just let it out.