Maya Klyashtornaya Has Died
The architect, daughter of the executed poet Todar Klyashtorny, was 89 years old.
Maya Klyashtornaya was a renowned architect who did much to perpetuate the memory of the victims of Soviet repressions, and was the scientific director of the Kurapaty memorial.
Maya Klyashtornaya was born on May 31, 1937, six months after her father's arrest, but his wife managed to arrange a meeting. "Mom saw Dad, Dad saw a premature but living infant," the woman later recounted. At the time of her mother's interrogation, Maya was only 3 months old.
Her father was executed on October 30, 1937, along with over a hundred representatives of the Belarusian officialdom, science, and culture elite.
"Mom was told: 10 years without the right to correspondence, and she believed it – both in the Akmolinsk camp and later during settlement in Siberia. She wondered why Dad wasn't looking for us, 10 years had passed, 'he's probably home already and waiting for us'."
Maya and her mother were exiled to the Akmolinsk camp for such wives of "enemies of the people" (ALZHIR), and the girl was placed in a camp orphanage. Her mother took her back only in 1947, as she had two more years added to her 8 years in the camps.
They did not return to Belarus, which was devastated by the war, but lived in a settlement in the Omsk region. Maya had severe spinal problems and was confined to a hospital bed for seven years.
Maya returned to Belarus in 1955, finished school in two years, then the Minsk Architectural and Construction College, and entered the Moscow Civil Engineering Institute. She returned to Belarus again as a qualified architect, working in "Belpromproekt" in the general planning department, where she dealt with urban planning issues.
One of her main life goals was to learn as much as possible about her father, Todar Klyashtorny.
Ms. Maya could always be seen at the processions to Kurapaty.