My grandmother

My grandmother is not like any grandmother that everyone has met. My grandmother has her very own special story. She was born in the Soviet Union, in 1940, during the Holocaust. It was a very dangerous time period, and as a little girl, she saw basically, her whole family pass right in front of her. She grew up in the Russian side of the Soviet Union and stayed there until my father was about to go into high school. My grandmother and my grandfather applied to be Refugees because they were trying to leave the Soviet Union, where people like them were hated and made it a very dangerous environment for them to live in. They were part of the Refuseniks and would get sent to jail for 3 days every once in a while because once applying to be a Refugee, you get fired from your job, and in the Soviet Union it was illegal not to work. Once, they got approval, in 1987, to leave the Soviet Union they went through Vienna and then lived in Italy for about 3 months. My grandparents were very poor because they were only allowed to leave the Soviet Union with $200 for a family of 3 people. My grandparents could not afford much when they got to the United States of America, so they would only purchase necessities. The only thing that they purchased that was not a vital necessity was books. My grandparents loved books, so they would buy them for my father, while he was little because they could not afford toys. My grandmother went to a library to get some books, but the guy saw how poor she was, so he gave her the books she wanted for free. For my grandmother, books are a symbol of her past and future. She loved reading and still does. My grandmother was one of the head general surgeons in the Soviet Union, but when they came to America none of that mattered. My grandmother had to go to medical school all over again, and she was the oldest in her class. My grandmother is 83 and she is one of the best Podiatrists in America. She even wrote a book about medicine and different diseases.