🕯️
IN LOVING MEMORY OF ALEXANDRA EVGELEVSKAYA
MY TEACHER. MY PROFESSOR. A REMARKABLE EDUCATOR. A PERSON I WILL REMEMBER FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE
ALEXANDRA EVGELEVSKAYA
1925–2026
On September 9, 2026, at the age of 101, Alexandra Evgelevskaya passed away — my beloved university teacher, professor, Doctor of Philosophy and Law, distinguished scholar, remarkable educator, and author of numerous academic works on fundamental questions of philosophy and jurisprudence.
It is especially difficult for me to write these words today.
There are people whose passing cannot be conveyed in a few formal sentences.
Because when they leave us, it is not merely a person who departs.
An era passes.
A part of our own lives passes with them.
A Teacher leaves us.
For me, the passing of Alexandra Evgelevskaya is precisely such a loss.
Today, I write not as a researcher, not as a lawyer, and not as an author.
I write as a student who has lost his beloved Teacher.
Alexandra Evgelevskaya was one of those rare university professors whose presence remains with a person for a lifetime.
One may forget an individual lecture.
Decades later, one may no longer remember a particular formulation.
One may even forget the number of the lecture hall in which one once sat as a student.
But it is impossible to forget the person who taught you how to think.
Alexandra Evgelevskaya was precisely such a person.
SHE SURVIVED ONE OF THE MOST TERRIBLE TRAGEDIES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Her life encompassed more than a century of human history.
In her youth, Alexandra Evgelevskaya endured the Holocaust — one of the greatest tragedies of humanity in the twentieth century.
She belonged to a generation of people who learned the value of human life, freedom, and dignity not merely from philosophical treatises and books of law.
That generation witnessed with its own eyes what happens when hatred becomes state policy, when human life ceases to have value, and when the law ceases to protect the individual.
Such ordeals could have broken a person.
They could have filled a person with bitterness.
They could have destroyed one's faith in humanity forever.
But Alexandra Evgelevskaya chose an entirely different path.
The path of knowledge.
The path of scholarship.
The path of philosophy.
The path of law.
The path of education.
The path of service to others.
She lived a long and dignified life.
And perhaps the most remarkable thing is that, having endured some of the most terrible trials imaginable, she devoted her life not to hatred, but to knowledge.
Not to bitterness, but to education.
Not to revenge, but to the upbringing of new generations.
A REMARKABLE EDUCATOR
Alexandra Evgelevskaya was not merely a professor.
She was a remarkable educator.
And there is an enormous difference between the two.
One can know one's academic discipline brilliantly and still be unable to teach it to others.
One can possess academic titles, publish books, write scholarly articles, and speak at conferences — and yet never become a true Teacher.
A true educator possesses something that no academic degree can confer.
The ability to awaken thought in another human being.
The ability to make a student ask questions.
The ability to teach a young person not merely to memorise, but to understand.
The ability to see in a young student not simply someone who has come to obtain a diploma, but a future professional who will one day have to make decisions, uphold the law, defend people, and bear professional responsibility.
Alexandra Evgelevskaya was precisely such an educator.
She did not merely deliver lectures.
She taught us how to think.
She taught us to analyse.
To question.
To debate.
To ask difficult questions.
To search for evidence.
To distinguish fact from assumption.
To defend our positions through reasoned argument.
She cultivated in her students a respect for law and an understanding of the enormous responsibility borne by those who choose the legal profession.
And that is why, today, decades later, I remember Alexandra Evgelevskaya not only as a professor and scholar.
Above all, I remember her as a remarkable educator and my beloved Teacher.
LAW IS NOT MERELY THE TEXT OF THE LAW
For Alexandra Evgelevskaya, jurisprudence was never reduced to the mechanical memorisation of articles, paragraphs, and legal formulations.
She taught us something far greater.
A true lawyer is not simply a person who knows the law.
A true lawyer must understand why law exists.
Behind every legal norm there is ultimately a human being.
A human life.
A person's freedom.
A person's dignity.
A person's rights.
A person's destiny.
Law without moral substance can become an instrument of arbitrariness.
State power without legal restraint can become violence.
And legal education without conscience can produce a professional who knows the law perfectly well but understands nothing about justice.
Alexandra Evgelevskaya understood this particularly deeply.
Perhaps because she herself belonged to a generation that knew only too well the price humanity pays when law and human dignity are destroyed.
She did not merely speak about morality.
She lived according to her principles.
She did not merely teach philosophy.
She taught us to reflect philosophically upon the human being, society, history, and responsibility.
She did not merely teach law.
She educated lawyers.
SHE EDUCATED AN EXTRAORDINARY GENERATION OF LEGAL PROFESSIONALS
This is perhaps one of the most important testimonies to the meaning of her life.
Over the decades of Alexandra Evgelevskaya's teaching career, an extraordinary number of future legal professionals passed through her university lecture halls.
Once, they were young students.
They sat in lecture halls.
They listened to her lectures.
They took notes.
They debated.
They sat examinations.
They received their diplomas.
And then real professional life began.
Today, among her former students are lawyers, advocates, investigators, judges, scholars, university professors, civil servants, and members of law-enforcement institutions.
Some defend people.
Others investigate crimes.
Some adjudicate cases.
Others pursue legal scholarship.
Still others now enter university lecture halls themselves and pass knowledge on to the next generation of students.
And in the professional lives of all those who had the privilege of studying under Alexandra Evgelevskaya, a part of their professor's work remains.
Could there be a more worthy monument to an educator?
THE GREATNESS OF A TEACHER LIVES IN THEIR STUDENTS
A professor may deliver a final lecture.
The door of the university lecture hall may close.
But the knowledge that a true educator has passed on to students continues to live.
This is the extraordinary nature of the Teacher's calling.
A Teacher continues to live through their students.
In their knowledge.
In their professional culture.
In their attitude towards the law.
In their understanding of justice.
In their ability to distinguish evidence from assumption.
In their willingness to defend another human being.
In their refusal to accept injustice as something normal.
One generation passes knowledge to another.
And the intellectual and moral chain continues.
This is why a true Teacher never disappears without a trace.
Alexandra Evgelevskaya left behind not merely memories.
She left behind people whom she helped to educate.
And those people continue her work every day.
HER BOOKS REMAIN
Alexandra Evgelevskaya was not only a remarkable educator.
She was a scholar and the author of numerous academic works devoted to fundamental questions of philosophy and jurisprudence.
And here there is another form of human immortality.
The book.
Human life has a beginning and an end.
Thought does not.
A book allows thought to outlive its author.
Today, one person closes its final page.
Ten years later, another reader opens the same book.
Twenty years later — a student.
Fifty years later — a researcher.
And the thought begins to speak once again.
Therefore, on September 9, 2026, the life of Alexandra Evgelevskaya came to an end.
But the life of her ideas did not.
Her scholarly works remain.
Her books remain.
Her students remain.
The educational and intellectual tradition she created remains.
MY BELOVED PROFESSOR
In the history of her university, Alexandra Evgelevskaya will remain a professor, scholar, and educator.
In philosophy and legal scholarship, she will remain the author of her works.
For generations of graduates, she will remain the professor who once helped them take their first serious steps into their profession.
But for me, there is a definition that is far simpler and, at the same time, far more precious.
MY TEACHER.
That is how I want to remember Alexandra Evgelevskaya.
Decades pass.
The student himself becomes an adult.
He enters a profession.
He acquires his own experience of life and work.
He writes.
He conducts research.
He debates.
He makes mistakes.
He learns again.
But somewhere deep inside him there forever remains that young student who once sat in a university lecture hall and listened to his professor.
And the older we become, the more clearly we understand how precious some of the encounters of our youth truly were.
I had the privilege of being a student of Alexandra Evgelevskaya.
And today I understand more clearly than ever how precious that privilege was.
101 YEARS — AN ENTIRE ERA
Alexandra Evgelevskaya lived for 101 years.
Within those three digits lies an almost unimaginable human history.
She belonged, in a sense, to several eras at once.
She witnessed the tragedies of the twentieth century.
She survived the Holocaust.
She witnessed wars and historic upheavals.
She saw some states disappear and others emerge.
She saw society change.
She saw law change.
She saw universities change.
She watched one generation of students succeed another.
And throughout all these immense historical transformations, she remained faithful to her calling:
to teach people, to pass on knowledge, and to educate future professionals.
Not everyone leaves behind wealth.
Not everyone leaves behind monuments.
But a true educator leaves behind something far more valuable:
educated human beings.
And Alexandra Evgelevskaya left behind an extraordinary number of students.
TODAY I BOW MY HEAD IN MEMORY OF MY TEACHER
On September 9, 2026, the earthly life of Alexandra Evgelevskaya came to an end.
Today, I want to say to her those simple words that perhaps we say far too rarely to our teachers while they are still with us.
Thank you, Alexandra Evgelevskaya.
Thank you for your lectures.
Thank you for your knowledge.
Thank you for philosophy.
Thank you for law.
Thank you for your intellectual rigour.
Thank you for your wisdom.
Thank you for your immense work as an educator.
Thank you for the generations of lawyers you educated.
Thank you for your books.
Thank you for your human dignity.
Thank you for your life.
I will remember you not only as a professor.
Not only as a scholar.
Not only as the author of academic works.
But above all as a remarkable educator and my beloved Teacher.
As long as students live, the Teacher lives.
As long as the Teacher's books are read, the Teacher's thought lives.
As long as the knowledge received from the Teacher is passed on to others, the Teacher's work continues.
And so today I do not want to say: “Everything has ended.”
No.
A life has ended.
But a legacy remains.
The books remain.
The students remain.
The memory remains.
And there remains the most important word that a student can utter decades later:
TEACHER.
In loving memory of you,
ALEXANDRA EVGELEVSKAYA.
Rest in peace, my dear Professor, my remarkable educator, and my Teacher.
I remember you.
And I always will.
Your student,
Doctor of Philosophy
Mayer Meir Kaltenbrunner
September 9, 2026
🕯️ IN LOVING AND EVERLASTING MEMORY OF MY TEACHER — ALEXANDRA EVGELEVSKAYA.
FORGIVE ME, MY DEAR ALEXANDRA FRIDRIKHOVNA…
I CANNOT BE THERE TO ACCOMPANY YOU ON YOUR FINAL EARTHLY JOURNEY
From Your Student — Mayer Meir Kaltenbrunner
Forgive me, my dear Alexandra Fridrikhovna.
Forgive me for not being able to be there beside you during these sorrowful days and in this final hour.
I cannot come to accompany you on your final earthly journey.
I cannot approach your coffin.
I cannot stand beside you for a few moments in silence.
I cannot bow my head before you and personally say one final time:
“Thank you, my Teacher.
And forgive me for not being there beside you today.”
It is deeply painful for me that our final farewell must take place this way — from such a distance.
Today, I would simply like to stand silently beside you.
Without speeches.
Without grand words.
Without formal phrases.
Simply to stand there in silence and remember the years of my university youth.
To remember the lecture halls.
Your voice.
Your lectures.
The way you treated us, your students.
Your high standards.
Your intelligence and refinement.
Your kindness.
And the remarkable humanity with which you treated the young people we were in those days.
SIX YEARS THAT WILL REMAIN IN MY MEMORY FOREVER
Alexandra Fridrikhovna, you were there with us throughout the long years of our university education.
Six years.
Today, six years may seem like only a small part of an entire human life.
But for a young person, the university years constitute an entire era.
And you became part of that era of my life.
We grew into adulthood before your eyes.
We arrived as students who still knew very little about real life and about the profession that awaited us.
We listened to you.
We learned.
Sometimes we debated.
Sometimes we made mistakes.
We sat our examinations.
We progressed from one year of study to the next.
And gradually we became the people and professionals we were destined to become beyond the walls of the university.
You did not treat us merely as surnames on a student register.
You saw us as human beings.
Future lawyers.
Future investigators.
Future advocates.
Future judges.
Future scholars and professors.
And today, after so many decades, I understand especially clearly just how precious such an attitude from a Teacher towards her students truly was.
TODAY, I WOULD SIMPLY LIKE TO STAND BESIDE YOU
If circumstances allowed me to come, I probably would not say very much.
I would simply approach you.
I would lay flowers beside you.
I would bow my head.
And I would stand beside you in silence.
Because there are moments when words become unnecessary.
In that silence, I would remember our university years.
Your lectures on philosophy and law.
Your observations.
Your questions.
The look of a professor who could sometimes, without saying a single word, make a student understand far more than could be conveyed in a long lecture.
I would remember my youth.
My fellow students.
The corridors of the university.
And the Alexandra Fridrikhovna we knew then — our professor, our remarkable educator, our Teacher.
And I would certainly say to you:
“Alexandra Fridrikhovna, thank you for those years.”
YOU REMAINED IN TASHKENT
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the lives of millions of people took different paths.
Borders changed.
The country in which so many years of our lives had passed ceased to exist.
People left.
They changed citizenship.
They began their lives again in other countries.
But you remained in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
You did not leave for Germany — the country from which your family originated — although, to the best of my knowledge, you were offered the opportunity to obtain citizenship of the Federal Republic of Germany.
You remained in the place where a significant part of your life had unfolded.
Where your students were.
Where you had taught.
Where people knew and remembered you.
And today, it is precisely there that I would wish to come, so that I might bow before you one final time.
But I cannot.
WHY I CANNOT BE THERE BESIDE YOU TODAY
Forgive me, Alexandra Fridrikhovna.
I want even these final words to you to be completely honest.
My absence does not mean that I have forgotten you.
It is not indifference.
And it is not because I do not wish to come.
The circumstances of my own life and my political activities have, for many years, made travel to the states of Central Asia a matter of personal safety for me.
Because of my political activities and my opposition to the authorities of Turkmenistan, I fear detention if I enter the region. For many years, I have had to proceed on the understanding that cooperation between the law-enforcement and security services of the Central Asian states could expose me to a genuine risk of arrest at the request of the Turkmen authorities.
How bitter it is to have to acknowledge this today.
Because today I do not need politics.
I do not need disputes.
I do not need states, borders, or documents.
There is only one thing I would need today:
the opportunity to come and say farewell to my Teacher.
But I do not have that opportunity.
And so I say farewell to you from here.
From far away.
FORGIVE ME FOR NOT BEING THERE BESIDE YOU
My dear Alexandra Fridrikhovna,
if human gratitude could cross state borders, mine would surely reach you today.
If memory could take the place of a person's physical presence, I would be standing beside you now.
If written words could take the place of flowers, I would lay these words beside you.
Forgive me for not being able to accompany you on your final journey.
Forgive me for not being able to stand beside your coffin.
Forgive me for not being able to bow my head before you there, among your family, loved ones, colleagues, and students who will gather to say farewell.
But please know this:
in my thoughts, I will be there beside you.
I will remember you as you have remained in my memory.
A professor.
A scholar.
A remarkable educator.
A person of an extraordinary destiny.
A woman who endured some of the most terrible trials of the twentieth century and preserved her dignity.
And above all —
my Teacher.
WE, YOUR STUDENTS, ARE PART OF YOUR LIFE
It is sometimes difficult for a Teacher to see the ultimate result of her work.
A student graduates from university and leaves.
Professional life begins.
Years pass.
Then decades.
Students disperse across different cities and different countries.
Each acquires a life of his or her own — a career, a family, achievements, and trials.
But that does not mean that the bond disappears.
A true Teacher remains within a person.
Sometimes it takes only one familiar thought, and suddenly the university lecture hall returns to your memory.
Sometimes you make a professional decision and realise that the foundations of your understanding of law were laid all those decades ago.
And so your work, Alexandra Fridrikhovna, did not end.
It continues through your students.
And that means that a part of your life remains within us.
MY FINAL “THANK YOU”
Today, an enormous distance separates us.
But human memory is not measured in kilometres.
Gratitude knows no state borders.
There is no statute of limitations on the bond between a Teacher and a student.
And so today, I want to say to you once again:
Thank you, Alexandra Fridrikhovna.
Thank you for those six years of university life.
Thank you for your lectures.
Thank you for your knowledge.
Thank you for your patience.
Thank you for your high standards.
Thank you for the wonderful way in which you treated us, your students.
Thank you for seeing future professionals in us even when we ourselves were only beginning to understand who we would become.
Thank you for philosophy.
Thank you for law.
Thank you for the moral lessons that could never be captured in lecture notes.
Thank you for your kindness.
Thank you for your integrity.
Thank you for your human dignity.
Thank you for being my Teacher.
And once again —
forgive me, my dear Alexandra Fridrikhovna, for not being able to be there beside you today.
I cannot accompany you on your final journey.
I cannot lay flowers beside you.
I cannot stand beside you one last time.
But I can do something that neither distance, nor borders, nor time can ever take away from me:
I can remember you.
And I will remember you.
For as long as I live.
Farewell, my dear Professor.
Farewell, my remarkable educator.
Farewell, my Teacher.
Rest in peace, Alexandra Fridrikhovna.
And forgive your student for having to say farewell to you today from so far away.
Your student,
Doctor of Philosophy
Mayer Meir Kaltenbrunner
September 9, 2026
🕯️ FORGIVE ME, MY TEACHER, FOR NOT BEING ABLE TO ACCOMPANY YOU ON YOUR FINAL EARTHLY JOURNEY. BUT MY MEMORY AND MY GRATITUDE ARE THERE BESIDE YOU TODAY. 🕯️
