Frida Aulova was born in Tashkent in 1919. Despite the strained financial situation of her family, she succeeded in studying at the Tashkent Medical Institute. After graduating in 1943, Frida was drafted into the Red Army. At the front, she served as a surgeon, working in both field and frontline hospitals. She operated on wounded soldiers as the Red Army advanced westward through Czechoslovak, Polish, and German territory. Frida Aulova was awarded the medal "For Battle Merit", as well as others. In her award citations, the Jewish Aulova was referred to as a Tajik.
After the end of the war in May 1945, instead of returning to her native Tashkent, Frida Aulova was sent to work as a doctor in Kashkadarinskaya Region in Uzbekistan. She was discharged from the Red Army in 1946 with the rank of captain of the medical service.
At the end of 1946, she returned to Tashkent, where she began to specialize in oncology. She recalled "… the training that I'd received during the war helped me understand the pain and anxiety of those ill with cancer."1
From 1946 until her immigration to the United States in 1991, Frida Aulova worked as a physician at the Tashkent City Oncological Prevention Center. She died in New York in 1997.
- 1. Ilia Iakubov, Voiny v sud'be bukharskikh evreev," p. 157
