The fate of our protagonist is dramatic and closely intertwined with the catastrophic events of the first half of the twentieth century. The world at that time was truly being shaken to its foundations, and amid such large-scale upheavals it was not easy to survive—let alone to preserve dignity and humanity, warmth of soul, and kindness. To the great credit of the renowned scientist and surgeon Israel Borisovich Klionsky, he succeeded in doing so fully. But let us proceed in order.

Israel Borisovich Klionsky was born on August 9, 1907, in the small town of Krupki, Senno Uyezd, Mogilev Governorate (today the town of Krupki in the Barysaw District of the Minsk Region, Belarus). His mother, Revekka Meerovna Shklyar (born in 1880), was also from Krupki; his father, Borukh Sholmovich Klionsky (born in 1866), came from the town of Zembin (now an agrotown in the same Barysaw District). On the eve of the Revolution, about 90 percent of Krupki’s population was Jewish; three Jewish prayer schools operated there.

Israel Klionsky’s parents were townspeople (petty bourgeois); later, in personal documents, our protagonist referred to them as unskilled laborers—apparently wishing to conceal his social background. During the Soviet period they retired; both were classified as disabled workers.

Israel Klionsky’s childhood fell during the turbulent years of the First World War and the Revolution. He completed a nine-year secondary school in 1924 in Orsha, a Belarusian town on the border with Russia.

The young man grew up talented and inquisitive, reading a great deal. He studied steadily and at a high level—he enjoyed all subjects. However, biology and medicine fascinated him especially from an early age, and a medical career at that time seemed attractive and promising.

It was precisely at this time, under the leadership of People’s Commissar Nikolai Semashko, that the Soviet healthcare system was being created. In cities, hundreds of hospitals and outpatient clinics were built; in rural areas, thousands of feldsher–midwife stations were established. The demand for physicians was truly enormous, and the level of training in medical institutes was quite high, thanks to the active involvement of the old professorial corps—the best specialists of the pre-revolutionary era. The flywheel of Stalinist repression had not yet been set in motion…

In 1927, Israel Klionsky enrolled in the Faculty of General Medicine and Preventive Care of the Second Moscow Medical Institute. In August 1931, our protagonist successfully graduated, receiving a medical diploma. Israel Klionsky was assigned to work as a district physician in one of the towns of the Nizhny Novgorod region. In 1932, his work was interrupted for a year: our protagonist was drafted into the army.

The position of a district physician hardly satisfied Israel Klionsky. His excellent academic performance, deep knowledge, and—most importantly—his genuine interest in medicine constituted a strong foundation for a successful scientific career. Moreover, during his final year at the institute, our protagonist became seriously interested in surgery. And Klionsky moved forward.

In 1934, the 27-year-old Israel Klionsky arrived in Leningrad and entered a residency program (specialty: surgery) at the S. M. Kirov Leningrad Institute for Advanced Medical Training. Two years later, at the same institution, in the Department of Purulent Surgery, he began postgraduate studies.

Several years of persistent research work and sleepless nights yielded a worthy result: a Candidate of Sciences dissertation entitled “Cerebral Arteriography in Skull Injuries,” successfully defended in 1939. By that time, our protagonist had already become an experienced practicing surgeon, performing highly complex operations that were at the cutting edge for his era.

Meanwhile, the world stood on the brink of a global catastrophe. Nazi Germany was asserting itself ever more brazenly and aggressively: it occupied the Sudetenland and all of Czechoslovakia as a result of the Munich Agreement, and took over Austria without a single shot being fired. Italy and Japan launched wars of conquest, while in Spain, through the bloody chaos of civil war, ultra-right rebels led by Franco were fighting their way to power. The borders of the USSR were also restless—particularly the Soviet–Finnish frontier. In 1938, Israel Klionsky spent several months there on military training as part of the 1st Border Detachment of the NKVD of the Leningrad Military District.

On September 1, 1939, with Germany’s attack on Poland, the Second World War began. Poland soon fell, and on September 17, 1939, the USSR—implementing the secret protocol of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact—sent troops into the territories of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, which at that time were part of Poland. Our protagonist also took part in the “Belarusian campaign,” as he himself called it in a brief autobiography for the personnel department (completed on July 21, 1952), serving as a military physician. In 1940, for the “Belarusian campaign,” Israel Klionsky was awarded the Medal “For Military Merit.”

On June 22, 1941, Hitler struck the USSR, ushering in an almost four-year-long bloodbath that claimed tens of millions of lives. By its end, however, the Führer himself would depart for the worst of worlds.

Yet in the summer of 1941 it was hardly possible for anyone to foresee all this, including our protagonist. That period later came to be associated for him not only with anxiety, but also with bright, joyful events: in 1941, Israel Klionsky married Kilya Iosifovna Katz. On June 21, 1942, their firstborn son, Alexander, was born, and after the war, in 1947, their younger son, Boris.

Kilya Iosifovna Katz was born on December 25, 1909, in the Ukrainian city of Poltava, into the family of townspeople Iosif Abramovich Katz (born in 1864, the settlement of Hradyzhsk, Kremenchuk District of Poltava Region) and Elizaveta Kiselevna Klein (born in 1869, the city of Kremenchuk, Poltava Region). In 1924, Kilya completed the local seven-year school, and in 1927, an industrial school. After graduating, she worked for four months as a chemical laboratory assistant at a plant in the town of Karlivka, Poltava Region, then moved to Leningrad, where from 1928 to 1934 she held the same position at the Stalin Plant. In 1932, she enrolled in the Metallurgical Faculty of the Leningrad Industrial Institute and successfully graduated in 1937. From 1937 to 1941, she worked as a process engineer at the Krasny Vyborzhets Metallurgical Plant.

In the autumn of 1941, many Leningrad enterprises were evacuated—along with their leading specialists and highly skilled workers. Kilya Katz, who had already established herself as a true professional, ended up in the town of Revda in Sverdlovsk Region, where she worked at Metallurgical Plant No. 518 until April 1942. She left her position due to going on maternity leave.

On June 21, 1942, Alexander Klionsky was born. Kilya Katz’s first childbirth went relatively smoothly, but later caused complications: she fell seriously ill for a long time and required surgery. This would later affect her health… She did not have enough of her own milk for breastfeeding and had to “buy it from another mother.” All the money that Israel sent from the front went toward this.

The room where Kilya lived with her infant son was bright and spacious, but desperately cold: in winter, during the harsh Ural frosts, she had to chop firewood constantly and keep the stove burning. Little Sasha Klionsky came down with pneumonia—but he pulled through, recovered, and grew into a sturdy baby.

Kilya did not write a single word about all these hardships to her husband at the front: he had worries of his own—far more important ones. Kilya’s granddaughter, Elena Flaks (Klionskaya)—the daughter of the Klionskys’ younger son Boris—would learn about her grandmother’s difficult life in evacuation only half a century later, while carefully studying the family archive.

And our protagonist was facing dangerous wartime days. Immediately after the outbreak of the war, Israel Klionsky was drafted into the army and assigned to the 627th Mobile Field Hospital, where he served as a third-rank military physician. He took part in the defense of Leningrad. He finished the war with the rank of Major of the Medical Service. He was awarded the Order of the Red Star and medals, including “For the Defense of Leningrad,” and “For Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945.”

From the very beginning of the war, Israel Klionsky and his “dear Kilechka” supported each other through letters. Israel wrote little about the hardships of military service—he worried far more about his wife and child. Some of his letters read as if they were written not by a military doctor who saved the lives of wounded soldiers every day, but by a vacationer at a sanatorium: “…The air is clean, forest-like, with a marshy tang. I try to spend time in the sun; in the evenings the little mosquitoes bother me. True, my health has worsened considerably. Lately I’ve been falling ill often, although I eat very well… I will be infinitely glad and happy to receive news from you of the successful outcome of the childbirth…” (from a letter by Israel Klionsky to Kilya Katz, June 10, 1942).

Virtually every letter from Israel Klionsky radiates an inexhaustible faith in a happy future, in the inevitable and imminent victory over the Hitlerite hordes. Today it is clear that hoping for a swift defeat of Nazi Germany was, alas, naïve. But was not this boundless optimism, this boyishly spirited faith, a harbinger of the real, truly great Victory? And at the same time a protection of the psyche from the many horrors that a person inevitably encountered in war.

Kilya’s letters to Israel are imbued with particular warmth and tenderness: “There has not yet been a single occasion when, upon receiving a letter from you, I did not immediately dash off a reply. So it is this time as well. Although you warn me that frequent moves do not allow you to receive my letters, the desire to converse with you, to pour my love into your being, to warm you during these days of great trials, gives rise in me to… the feeling of a conscientious correspondent. Today I came back from the factory earlier, covered the windows with special dark curtains, and now—one o’clock at night—the room has an atmosphere so familiar to you, the desk lamp is lit, silence. … Izenka, my dear, why did you send me such a large sum? Yesterday I received the notice; I will go to the post office on the 12th (Tuesday)…” (from a letter by Kilya Katz to Israel Klionsky, August 10, 1941).

During the Siege of Leningrad, Israel Klionsky sometimes managed to make his way back to his native city. One’s heart tightens when reading the lines from his letters of that period:

“…I went to see Mira (a relative of Israel Klionsky – M.K.). At the end of December I received a letter from her, full of despair. After receiving a dry ration for ten days, I took more than half of it to her. Her appearance—just the sight of Mira—frightened me. Before me stood Koschei the Immortal. On the table in her apartment lay the corpse of her mother; in the cradle slept her daughter” (from a letter by Israel Klionsky to Kilya Katz, April 16, 1942).

By 1944, the USSR had definitively seized the initiative in the war. On January 8, 1944, the blockade of Leningrad was lifted. Soon afterward, Israel Klionsky took advantage of a short leave and visited his apartment in the building on Lermontovsky Prospekt. According to his account, the building gave the impression of a crypt: the darkness, dampness, and especially the absence of people were terrifyingly oppressive. The door and ceiling of the Klionskys’ apartment had been pierced by large fragments of shrapnel; the windowpanes were gone. The stove had cracked, and in places the plaster had crumbled away. Yet the furniture had survived, as had part of the family library. On the writing desk there was even metallurgical literature—seemingly waiting for Kilya’s return…

Amid the harsh routine of wartime, an extraordinary episode occurred in Israel Klionsky’s life—one that was even reported in the newspaper Leningradskaya Pravda (issue of June 3, 1942) in a short piece titled “A Surgical Case.”

Early one spring morning, a medical battalion’s horse-drawn cart rolled up to the mobile army hospital.

“Here we are,” said the Red Army driver, helping the sick passenger down to the ground.

The patient was stocky and broad-shouldered. He had arrived from the medsanbat with a diagnosis that was not the most alarming: “contusion of the right ankle joint,” and yet he looked extraordinarily pitiful. His face twitched with spasms, and every crease expressed excruciating pain.

The nurses hurried about, orderlies rushed in. The head of the surgical group was summoned—third-rank military physician Israel Klionsky. Our protagonist долго and carefully palpated the patient’s joint.

“Has anyone in your family suffered from bone tuberculosis?”

“My father did, and my mother too,” the patient groaned.

“Have there been injuries to this same spot in childhood or a few years ago?”

“There were—there was even a fracture…”

“And have you had articular rheumatism?”

“I have! Oh, it hurts… Doctor, I’m a Komsomol political instructor—you must help me.”

Israel Klionsky remained silent. He sat beside the stretcher, his hand mechanically palpating the patient’s leg. Then he rose slightly and, drawing the nurse aside, said:

“The patient speaks of a fracture, articular rheumatism, hereditary tuberculosis—but none of that is present at all. The injury is of a very concealed nature—an operation will be required.”

“An operation—for a bruise?!” the nurse exclaimed in astonishment.

“A covert operation,” Klionsky said meaningfully. “And it will be performed by the military commissar…”

Two days later, the hospital’s commissar informed Israel Klionsky:

“Your diagnosis has been brilliantly confirmed. The patient turned out to be a fascist spy who had crossed through the front. Under the guise of an invalid, he was trying to penetrate our rear.”

“The operation was, of course, performed?” our protagonist asked with a restrained smile.

“Appropriate to the surgical case,” the commissar replied with the utmost seriousness, giving a barely perceptible wink.