Novosibirsk until the end of World War II, a period of nearly three years. Klara attended public high school in Novosibirsk for her academic work and resumed musical studies in the Novosibirsk Special Music School. There her new violin professor was Josef Gutmann, a fine and experienced teacher who had fled Kiev for Siberia to escape the Germans. Gutmann refined her playing along lines of greater ease and relaxation and prepared her for conservatory studies. In Post-war Odessa In 1945 the war ended, and Klara graduated from high school in Novosibirsk. With the Nazis defeated and departed, she and her mother returned to find a devastated Odessa. Klara, now 17, auditioned for the Odessa Conservatory. She was admitted as a student of Leonid Lembersky, a renowned pedagogue and former student of Stolyarsky who concertized widely as a soloist and chamber musician in the Ukraine. In addition to his conservatory students, Lembersky also taught several students in the elite Stolyarsky Academy. (Lembersky's daughter, Suzanna Lemberskaya, was for a time a student of Klara's; she later became a pianist and opera coach with the San Francisco and Pittsburgh operas.) Under Lembersky, Klara Gordion pursued a five-year program that led to her master's degree in Chamber Music and Teaching in 1951, at the age of 23. The year she graduated, she won a section position as first violinist in the Orchestra of the Odessa Theatre of Opera and Ballet. In Leningrad After two years in the Odessa opera orchestra, Klara met Adam Adolfovich Berkovich, a 25-year-old army engineer who was visiting his parents in Odessa. They had known each other slightly as children, and soon they married. Adam was based in Leningrad, so Klara and her mother left Odessa and joined him there. Arriving in the city in 1953, Klara Berkovich wanted to teach, but she lacked connections in the music community. When she applied to the civic authorities for a position in the city's music schools, she was told there were no local openings for inexperienced candidates. There was, however, a vacancy in Vyborg, a formerly Finnish town six hours to the north by train. She took the job. Every Wednesday she caught the midnight train to Vyborg, taught children Thursday through Saturday, and returned to Leningrad on the Saturday overnight. At the end of the school year her work was examined by the musical authorities in Leningrad, and she was awarded