Raspberries Saved My Life

Irena Dmitrovskaya Schachter was born in 1930 to an civil engineer father and an economist/musician mother in Kiev. Living under the oppressive Stalin regime until World War II, Irena attended middle school and took art lessons, revealing a real talent at a very early age. In 1941, the Germans occupied Kiev, and so began a series of moves. On one ship leaving Konigsberg, Irena and her family watched as two ships before theirs hit mines and sank. The Dmitrovskayas survived, and they ended up...