This sultry image of me was to be displayed on the cover of my first album, before the project was cancelled. The record company believed it to be sexy, but I thought I looked like a poodle.
Young love in bloom: I married Avi Samuel in Melbourne in 1976.
Although my marriage fell apart, it brought me my first beautiful daughter, Romy, in 1977. She was the most amazing child and brought nothing but joy into my life.
After a messy divorce from Avi and the cold-blooded murder of my prospective fiancé, George, Danny Weinstock came along to pick up the pieces of my broken life and became my second husband in 1987.
Here is Melanie minutes after delivery in Danny’s arms. Having nearly died in childbirth, I didn’t hold her for two days.
Here we are enjoying the summer sunshine in Surfer’s Paradise, Queensland, with our nanny, Susan, holding Melanie. She was always a water baby.
At the Melbourne Zoo with one-year-old Melanie in 1990. I always loved motherhood—but I had greater ambitions than being a housewife and mother.
Family portrait, 1991, only months before our ambitions of being a corporate couple would carry Danny and me to our fateful landing in Moscow.
Before 1992, we’d been to Moscow twice and enjoyed exploring its environs. On this small and winding street was the one and only stately old synagogue. During the Soviet regime, when we went inside for the service, KGB agents stood in the back, keeping tabs on us and other Jews.
These big-boned Russian women treated me like an old friend at a party thrown in our honour. They served us so much vodka that Danny had to be carried out of the house at night’s end but I managed to hold my own.
The gray and ominous view of downtown Moscow in 1991 from the window of the Sputnik Hotel, where we met the ‘business partner’ Mikhail Rudd. He would make our next visit to Russia a living hell.
Me in front of our favourite Moscow residence, the Peking Hotel, where the Chinese restaurant serves only Russian food. We never quite made it here on our final trip, when our lodging became a horror house in the country.
Dimitry Afanasiev: A brilliant young Russian lawyer living in America in 1992. His behind-the-scenes exchange of information to Russian authorities was the key link between the FBI and Russian police, leading to our rescue.
Colonel Vladimir Rushailo: Grim-faced, iron-fisted, and ruthlessly seeking glory, he stopped at nothing to track down our kidnappers. He was rewarded with promotions to the highest levels of the Russian government.
With the interior of the ‘dacha’ that was our prison for eleven days seared into our brains, Danny and I later drew from memory this blueprint of the place for the Russian cops.
The upstairs bedroom marked ‘we stayed here,’ the ‘unrenovated room’ where we were beaten, and the downstairs ‘trapdoor to cellar’ still make my blood run cold.
The face of the evil Mikhail Rud, our partner-turned-tormentor who hatched the kidnap plot. He went the way of most corrupt Mob bosses. He was slain on the streets of Vladivostok in a contract-style killing.
Danny took this picture of me in the ‘safe house’ where we stayed after our rescue. I managed to smile through the pain and fear, but I hardly moved from that ledge for two days, watching out the window for lurking strangers.
This is an exact replica of the Zil automobile in which I was kidnapped ten minutes after leaving Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport.
The letter from the Ministry of Internal Affairs pulling strings so that we could leave the country without delay. After the rescue, this letter was the closest thing to an apology we ever received for our suffering from the powers that be in Russia. Later, Russia’s corrupt court system made a mockery of justice at the kidnappers’ trial.
When we arrived in Melbourne, Danny and I tried to talk publicly about the ordeal, but I couldn’t keep from breaking down in tears. It took years for me to stop crying and move ahead.
We used this now battered Russian phrase book to communicate with our captors. They used it to demand money from us. I’ve kept it as a memento to remind me of the strength it took to survive the nightmare.
After putting the agony of the kidnapping behind us, Danny and I tried to resume life as the loving and affectionate couple we had been, but my expression gives away my feeling that our marriage would never be the same. The marriage ended in 1994.
With Melanie on her eleventh birthday in 2000—just before I left for America. If I look happier, it’s because I had met the man of my dreams.
His name is Sam Bornstein. I waited forty-four years for him to find me. He made everything right in my life.
Copyright
First published in Australia in 2008 by
New Holland Publishers (Australia) Pty Ltd
Sydney • Auckland • London • Cape Town
www.newholland.com.au
1/66 Gibbes Street Chatswood NSW 2067 Australia
218 Lake Road Northcote Auckland New Zealand
86 Edgware Road London W2 2EA United Kingdom
80 McKenzie Street Cape Town 8001 South Africa
Published by AuthorHouse in the USA in 2005
Copyright © 2008 New Holland Publishers (Australia) Pty Ltd
Copyright © 2008 in text Yvonne Bornstein
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders.
A record of this book is held at the National Library of Australia
ISBN 9781741107937
e-ISBN 9781921655395
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Eleven Days of Hell Page 28
