May 9 is the Victory Day. It is a holiday for everybody including those who personally participated in the war and for those who read books about it. Unfortunately, on May 9th we received the sad news. In Tekeli, the eldest member of our community, World War II veteran, a famous medical doctor Mark Milshtein passed away.

He was summoned to the Red Army when he was very young. In July 1941, he got into entrapment. Thus he became a prisoner of war and was sent to a Romanian concentration camp. Paradoxically, the concentration camp saved life to the Jew because Romanians were rather sympathetic to the Russian, Jews, and Polish. In 1944 Romania went out of the Hitler Coalition. Mark had to undergo lot’s of interrogations held by Soviet authorities and finally was sent to the war front again.

After the war Milshtein went to Odessa Medical University. In 1950 after the graduation he was sent to Tekeli in Kazakhstan. A new period of his life started: doctor’s work, operations, consultations. No matter what happened in his life, one thing never changed - surgery department in his Tekeli. He had been working there for 40 years!

Mark Milshtein always remembered his comrades in arms. He believed that there are more kind people than evil ones, and that kindness is the foundation of the humanity.

Alexander Matushkin