About the book: 2013 / Ganna-Laura was born in the summer of 1923 in Berlin. “Dad later said that he would have named me Nadya or Natasha. But my mother’s choice fell on this name, because she read from magazines that that was the name of the beauty queen of that year - she liked the photo of this queen, and along with the queen, the name,” Laura Belenkina begins her memoirs. And then he describes his life: a happy childhood in Germany, adolescence and growing up after moving to the USSR. Berlin in the 1920s, Moscow in the 1930s, war, poverty, communal life, Soviet school, post-war anti-Semitism, friendship and love. Laura Belenkina, with her memory for details and an interested look at events, paints a colorful picture of life in a bygone era in her memoirs..