Raisa Chukh Her father, who was born in Poland, made and sold colanders, and her mother was the manager of an artel. She trained as a nurse before the war, but was not sent to the front because she had a toddler to care for, and instead evacuated to the Caucasus, where she worked as a surgeon’s assistant. After the war, she continued working as a nurse until the age of seventy-three. She was head nurse at her hospital for forty years.