From 1940 she lived in Leningrad. The unexpected advance of the Nazis on the Leningrad Front found her in Tsarskoe Selo. She and her daughter were put in a concentration camp near Pskov, but they managed to escape to Narva, where they lived illegally in a destroyed synagogue. She then moved to the village of Shishaki to stay with relatives. There she began her first serious works, the plays "Ivan Kosogor" (1939) and "In Old Moscow" (1940). Although these 2 plays won prizes, Vera felt that the dramatic form confined her, and, by her own admission, she was unable to fit all that she wanted to say into its strict framework. She felt that she could work with greater freedom in the novel and story forms.