More Name Changes.

Before I forget, I wanted to mention that not just places got their names changed in the old USSR. The secret police, who managed to creep into everyone's life, also had name changes. In my book - which happens between 1929 and 1931 - they're called the OGPU. By 1934, they morphed into the NKVD. (And before being called the OGPU - they were just the GPU.)

The NKVD became the NKGB in 1941, the MGB in 1946, and then divided into 2 groups in 1954. The KGB was in charge of espionage, while the MVD was the secret police.

Oh, and today Russia's secret police are called the FSB.

So many initials. Boggles the mind. But when that knock came on the door, and the vehicle was waiting, it all boiled down to the same loss of freedom and of human rights ... interrogation and either death or the GULAG. (Those initials stood for: Glavnoe upravlenie lagerei - Main Camp Administration).

Serendipity

I've been digging through my photos
of Ukraine trying to find the best ones.
I went over there in May, 2004. It was
the most amazing trip and now that I
have this blog, I'm going to share some
of my experiences.

Here's a photo of me and Uri
(my interpreter) in the
former KGB files of Zhitomir.

I was able to look through
documents about my grandfather.
My dear old mom was finally
able to learn what had happened to her
father from whom she was separated in
1931 as a 12 year old.

Some of these OGPU (the secret police
of the day) documents were on faded
pink paper and classified 'top secret'.
All, of course, were written in Russian.
The file on my grandfather was quite thick.
It's mind-numbing to think that there
are highrises full of such documents
throughout the former Soviet Union.
They were meticulous book-keepers.
I'll share some of the details of
these documents in a later post.

Discovering my grandfather and the child
my mother once was over in that faraway
place has been a most serendipitous
journey.

Word of the day: serendipity -
The faculty of finding valuable or
agreeable things not sought for.
(from Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary).