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Soon after, Masha’s mother traveled to America to visit her brother in the San Francisco Bay Area.

We had friends who went there with their families – and they all died quickly and painfully,” she says.

“After the accident, the Soviet government was paying triple-salary for people to work in Chernobyl. Twelve-year-old Masha – her mother a doctor and her father working in the health ministry – became acutely aware of the health issues involved. With the Ukrainian wind blowing north, Belarus suffered the worst radiation. Masha’s destiny changed in 1986 following the catastrophic meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. And my mother lit a memorial candle for her mother – on the Gregorian date, because she had no access to a Jewish calendar.” “Once a year, in springtime, I’d be instructed to eat burnt crackers that would magically appear from an underground bakery. Our main concern was: Is there bread in the store?”īut Masha did experience some curiosities at home. Nobody ever mentioned anything about being Jewish. “The Soviet Union succeeded in stamping out the Jewish identity of millions of people," Masha said during an interview. “It's not like you could start going to synagogue – because there are none!” “What difference does it make?” her non-Jewish father replied. One time she probed, asking her parents about a possible Jewish heritage. Despite having Jewish aunts and uncles, being Jewish was never spoken about at home. Growing up in the Soviet Union during the 1980s, Masha Merkulova didn’t realize she was Jewish.