On June 25 Tamara Shaikevich-Ilina presented her new books: "A Pink on Asphalt", "This is Impossible to Forget" at the Community Center Rimon. Tamara Yakovlevna is an extraordinary person, a bright and interesting woman, Doctor of Medical Science, Tuberculosis Specialist, Volunteer of the Jewish community. President of Mitsva Association Alexander Baron introduced her to the audience, "Our Tamara Yakovlevna is a wonderful doctor, writer, and a beautiful woman. She is so charming that no one can compete with her regardless of age. Let me congratulate you on your birthday! We wish you to live long and have new creative achievements!"

This hardworking woman stared writing at seventy years old and has published already 6 books. Tamara Yakovlevna shared the history of creating her first two publications, "I was writing "A Pink on Asphalt" for four years. I decided to start writing to combat the falsification of historic facts. At first I wanted to write an autobiography. Then the content expanded. The first part of the book is reflections, thoughts. I was born in 1925. In the St Petersburg library I found an archive of newspapers issued during the first five years of my life. I wanted to compare what a little Jewish girl remembered and what the newspapers were writing at that time. The second part is the recollections of my meetings with famous people with extra sensorial perceptions including Volfgang Messing and Anatoliy Kashpirovskiy. The third part is about Jewish traditions. Only in recent years we were able to learn about Idishkait. I described my first Bar-mitsva that I attended and the first funerals according to Jewish traditions - funerals of my old friend, a good person. The last part of the book, "Ruth. The Poet and Fate" (it was issued as a separate edition) is about Poetess Ruth Tamarina, who had been my good friend for a long time.

The book "This Is Impossible to Forget" is about the Stalinism and December events of 1986. My parents were repressed as enemies of the people. This fact underlines the whole story. Nowadays many people say that the horrible measures were justified by the necessity, as if it was impossible to build a new state without it. My father was shot in 1938. My mother was sent to ALZHIR (that’s why there is a picture of a torn star with a grid - there is such a monument on the territory of the former camp for "wives of motherland betrayers"). At 13 I lost my parents. It is a myth that such things were necessary. Stalin just could not act otherwise. I support my story with documents. I was shocked by recollections of Raimond Yanson and findings of the Memorial NGO. As for the December events of 1986, I think Leonid Pritsker was the best to speak about it in his book "This is Impossible to Forget"

Time passes by but it stays in our memory. There are people, and Tamara Yakovlevna is one of them, who make efforts so that history lessons not to be lost, they share their memories and feelings. The young people of the community were very touched by the story, they asked the author many questions and expressed intention to read the author’s new books.

Lyudmila Starodubova