Lak Garry Tsalelovich (10 March 1925, Riga) ― geologist.
Garry Lak’s father was Tsalel Ekabovich (1890―1944), designer of women's shoes, owner of a trading company in Riga; mother ― Hanna (1886―1968), owner of a trading company in Riga; sister ― Dora (born 1917), stepbrother Ilya (born 1910) and stepsister Tatiana (born 1906) .
From 1925 to 1939, he was educated at home, enrolled in the second grade of a German school, and studied at the Riga Public Gymnasium. At the same time, his father built his own house in Palestine, where his brother Ilya moved in 1936. In 1940, after the occupation of Riga by Soviet troops, his parents' business was nationalised. The Lak family was deported from Latvia to Siberia. On 15 July 1941, the family arrived in Kansk, then was sent to live in the village of Antsyr, where they worked on the K. Voroshilov collective farm. In the autumn of 1941, Garry Lak received permission to attend school. On 12 December 1941, Lak's father was arrested and sent to a camp near Krasnoyarsk. In early June 1942, Garry Lak was also arrested, taken to Krasnoyarsk, and then to Tura. He enrolled in secondary school but was expelled and sent to dig pits, chop wood, and carry water. He mastered the craft of cooperage. In the autumn of 1943, he was appointed locomotive engineer at a power station. In the summer of 1944, he was mobilised to the front and sent to the 320th Reserve Regiment in Omsk. His mother and sister were allowed to leave Tura for the Urals to stay with his mother's brother. At the same time, a death certificate arrived confirming that his father had died in the camp (d. 19 February 1944).
At the front, Garry Lak was appointed commander of a reconnaissance unit and sent to the reconnaissance company of the artillery regiment of the 70th Army of the 2nd Belorussian Front. He took part in combat operations in Poland and Germany, and was then transferred to the regiment headquarters as a translator. He was seriously wounded, after which he returned to the regiment and participated in the work of the Special Department as a translator.
In October 1945, he was demobilised from the army and went to live with his mother and sister in Sverdlovsk, and in December he went to Riga to live with his cousin. In Riga, he enrolled in a driving school, qualified as a truck driver, and worked in a motor transport battalion specialising in long-distance transport and in the garage of a match factory. He moved to Leningrad, where he enrolled in an industrial technical school for light industry.
On 25 May 1947, he got a job as a worker in a geological expedition on the Kola Peninsula, and on 1 November, he started working in the geology department of the Karelian-Finnish Research Base of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Petrozavodsk. At the same time, he translated V. Tanner's book on the geology of Fennoscandia. From the autumn of 1949, he studied diatom analysis in Leningrad. In the spring of 1950, he took part in the creation of a diatom analysis laboratory in Sainavolok.
In 1952, he received a diploma for completing a full course of study in diatom analysis. In 1954, he published his first book, Diatoms of Quaternary Deposits in Western Karelia. In 1955, Lak's mother moved to Israel. In November 1956, by decision of the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Garry Lak was transferred to the position of junior research fellow with a personal salary.
From 1958 to 1965, he studied at the Republican Secondary Correspondence School, then enrolled in the Geography Department of Moscow State University (with the assistance of Professor K. Markov and Minister of Education V. Elyutin). He passed his exams as an external student. From 1966 to 1970, he studied in graduate school, and after defending his candidate's dissertation, he continued his scientific work.
In 1978, he visited Germany. From 1987 to 1991, he worked on a medical-geographical atlas of Karelia. After retiring, he completed a tour guide course and conducted tours of historical sites in Petrozavodsk. In 1989, he travelled to Israel. In 1992, he was rehabilitated and received rehabilitation certificates for his father, mother and sister. In the 1990s, he suffered a stroke. He is working on the books ‘A Story Without a Title’ and ‘In the Power of Fate,’ as well as his memoirs, ‘The House on Zareka.’
His first wife was Agnes Vert, his second wife was Nadezhda Goryunova, his son’s name is Sergei.
Selected work: Diatomaceous Quaternary Deposits of Western Karelia (Диатомовые четвертичных отложений Западной Карелии). Leningrad: Publishing House of the Leningrad Branch of the Academy of Sciences, 1954.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Harry Tsalelovich Lak for providing the Museum with photographs.