Celia Ores

Reading Pushkin in Siberia Celia Ores

In Reading Pushkin in Siberia, Dr. Celia Ores tells her tale of survival during World War II. She fled her hometown of Dubienka, Poland, during the Nazi invasion, only to be sent with her family by the Soviets to a gulag in Siberia. Dr. Ores came of age in the most unlikely of places: the gulags and prison villages of the Soviet Union. A Soviet-appointed doctor invested in her by taking her on nature walks, teaching her Russian and sneaking works by the masters of Russian literature, like Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, which Dr. Ores memorized and still recalls to this day. The doctor offered her compassion and kindness, and nourished her innate drive to learn. Dr. Ores learned to speak and read Russian and read works of literature by forbidden lamplight in the labor camp in Siberia. After Siberia, Dr. Ores was sent to a camp in Kazakhstan, where she attended school in a Kazakh prison village with prisoners from Moscow and other areas under Soviet control. Following the war, Dr. O