In Memoriam, Dmitriy S.

 

 

 

 

 My father-in-law, Dmitriy S., was 14 years old when his mother -- my wife's grandmother -- was killed by the German Nazis in early 1941 in a village near Kharkiv, Ukraine. She was one of millions of civilians killed in that war. Earlier, Dmitriy's father, a Tatar village leader and healer, had cured the young Dmitriy of malaria by boiling-down crayfish.  Dmitriy later served as an officer of the Soviet Strategic Air Forces, and with his wife, a doctor, had two daughters -- a cultural scientist and a biomedical scientist -- and two grandchildren.