By Larissa Varlamova
My mother, Vanda Wollert was born in St. Petersburg, but she had only known her native city by the name of Leningrad. At the age of 7, Vanda lost her father to the purges of Joseph Stalin when he was arrested in the middle of the night for reasons still unknown to this day.
With her father arrested as a “traitor to his people” (“vrag naroda”), Vanda and her mother had to flee Leningrad and were exiled to Sevastopol, Crimea on the Black Sea. After finishing high school, at the age of 16, she studied to be an actress and subsequently began performing classical roles on stage with a professional dramatic ensemble theater in Sevastopol. Vanda was a beautiful girl, talented with a strong and gutteral voice as she sang those old Russian gypsy songs which had been passed on to her through the generations — songs that had never been written down. She sang those songs from the bottom of her soul and there was not a dry eye in the house, after hearing Vanda wail those gypsy caravan camp-fire laments; she was a true and natural artist with a tender heart.
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