[1][2] She was one of nine children: each child was given a biblical name: Pnina, Azariah, Mattany, Rachel, Asaf (or Assaf), Elisheva, Sulamith (or Shulamith), Emanuel, Abinadab and Erella.

Ra Messerer’s film career was rather short, because soon after the wedding she devoted herself to the family and her husband, who represented the Soviet Government in Spitsbergen, being the Consul General in Barentsburg and chief of coal mines.On 30 April 1937, her husband Mikhail Plisetski was purged, charged with espionage and executed on 8 January 1938.

The secret police agents demanded of Messerer to confirm that her husband was "a spy, a traitor, a saboteur, a criminal, and a participant of the conspiracy against Stalin."

Her daughter Maya faced the threat of an orphanage; she was adopted by her aunt Sulamith.

In summer 1939, Rachel was transferred to "ALZhIR" (Akmolinsk Camp for Wives of Traitors to the Motherland) in Kazakhstan.