Maria Balabanskaya

Very old person was brought to the House of Mercy recently. She is 90.
The house she had in the village had burned down and the daughter in Kiev refused to accept mother. She refused to help at all.

They brought her to us from the Desniansky territorial center of social service
Unfortunately, there is no state shelter for people in crisis in the city 🙁 🙁 🙁

«My name is Maria Balabanskaya, born in 1930.
My parents died of starvation. I was a little girl and lived under the sheds, near garbage cans, until I got picked up by a rich woman. All the poor people died and I lived at her house 1946, worked for her.
Then I have injured the arm and it began to rot. Rich woman did not care about that and I only could work using one arm.

In 1946 when the war finished, people came to the village to hire for the construction in the city. The city had to be rebuilt. Most villagers were dead, the war had killed everyone. The village council gave it to me because there were no relatives.

In Kiev, my hand condition worsened, the infection went up and I was put in the hospital. There, after recovery, I was adopted by one of the nurses – she already had two daughters. She brought me home, gave me nice clothes and I became like a princess and my life was very good.

Two months later we went to dances, all four of us – my, my sisters and mother.
One captain approached the mother and asked: May I invite your daughter to dance? Mother said yes. And he did not let me go all evening and 30 years after it. We married.

I worked in the military store for 16 years. Then I have got heart asthma and had to undergo the lengthy treatment.
My husband died and we had no children.

One night, I woke up to a squeak, some weak sound in the trash in the street. Maybe a kitten. I went there and found a baby! I called the police and baby was taken to the hospital. It was a girl.

I visited her in the hospital and then adopted her and brought her up.

But when the trouble happened to me, she treats me like this… a whole drama to me…
There were some cases when she was beating me, but now she rejected me completely …”