The Pierced Portrait -- Fact and Fiction

The Pierced Portrait has been published in Fabula Argentea.

This story is a fictionalized account of my family's WWII history. Almost everything there is true, especially the events that seem the most unlikely.

This is the only fictional event in the story: in real life the pierced portrait was drawn not by Lyova on the train but later by his cousin(in 1942). The cousin's family evacuated to Saratov and was starving there. Vera worked as a doctor in a sovhoz near Kazakhstan. The sovhoz's director and also the locals grateful for her medical help gave her enough food to feed her family, so she invited these other relatives, and they lived with her for about a year.

The pierced pictures and documents from Sasha's pocket:

Elmira's photo

Vera's photo.

Lyova in the army, 1945.

Lyova wrote: for the long and good memory to sister Vera and niece Elmirochka from brother and uncle Lyova.

Town Putnoa(?) Chechoslovakia

25.03.1945

Verochka, when you remember me -- look at the photo.

Sasha and Vera soon after their wedding.

Sasha in the Army.

The Fallen Soldier's Grave where Sasha is buried. Elmira has been trying to locate his grave for many years, but only in 2013, 70 years after Sasha's death, when the army archives had been digitalized, a friend found these pictures for her.