The train picked up speed, the new family spread their bodies, and Galina stepped into the passageway — not too far, so she could keep an eye on her belongings. And there she stood, her body rolling with the train, the time passing, she couldn’t say for how long, when she felt a touch to her shoulder. She sprang around. There was a woman about her mother’s age asking whether she would like to join her and her husband. The voice was friendly, the smile warm, and alone and miserable and at the end of her tether, Galina refused to allow her usual suspicions to dominate.

She moved her belongings into their compartment, and the three of them travelled all the way to Kiev in a space reserved for four. The couple shared their food, they shared their tea, and over the next several hours she and her new friends read, dozed, and conversed about safe topics: work (both were teachers), family (a married son, no grandchildren), the passing scenery, the books they were reading. It was only when they arrived in Kiev that they mentioned their connection to Lvov.

Being careful is a way of life in the Soviet Union, and a feature of being careful is to be sensitive to nuance. The code word here was Lvov. Who other than emigrating Jews would be travelling with large suitcases from Leningrad via Kiev to Lvov? Yet the couple’s name was Russian, not Jewish. Galina would never have guessed.

On the journey from Kiev to Lvov they opened up. The woman told her they were emigrating to America, along with their family. ‘Our son and daughter-in-law are already in Rome. We’d intended to travel together, but something unexpected happened.’ She raised her eyebrows and shrugged, as if to acknowledge that Galina would understand without her having to elaborate. ‘We thought it prudent they leave early.’

Galina wanted to ask whether they really were Jewish, but knew she could not. If the best way of emigrating was to be Jewish, it would be a narrow-minded or stubbornly anti-Semitic Russian who did not take the opportunity. The irony of it did not escape her or any Jew: there was so much anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, but with the relaxation on Jewish emigration, people were suddenly rushing to be Jewish.

Whatever the couple’s ethnicity, she was glad for their company; she even found herself regretting she was not going to America with them. She did, however, welcome them on the journey, and she needed them too, for Jewish or not, they’d done their homework. In Vienna, they knew to look for the representative from HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. She’d never heard of this HIAS, and her anxiety flared again as she wondered what else she might not know.

‘HIAS look after any Soviet Jew, no matter where they’re going — unless it’s to Israel, another group looks after them.’