Lev and Ginda Rubenstein with son Boris

This is my parents with me on the photo. In 1924 or 1925 my father graduated from Kiev Agricultural Institute, obtaining the speciality of agriculturist and zootechnician and went to work in Jewish settlements in the Crimea.Father worked there for several years. Father was short, very modest by character, gentle and kind. He got acquainted with Mum at a family party. My mum, Ginda Basok, was brought up in the Soviet times. I do not know where she studied in childhood. I know, that in 1924-1927 she studied at a rabfak. [Rabfak - school for adults]. Mum and Daddy got married in 1927, and in 1929 I was born. Daddy then worked as a zootechnician in Proskurov, and we moved to the city of Nikolaev in 1932. In the beginning of the war I was just a 12-year old boy. Germans came nearer to our native city, and, on September 11, 1941 mother and me got in a train, which took away the workers of the Nikolaev Shipbuilding factory to the rear, to Astrakhan. Daddy was in Nikolaev in the people's militia [irregular national army] at that time. Their battallion dug large anti-tank ditches, built artificial obstacles. But it turned out that Germans came from another direction. The irregulars were evacuated, and Daddy joined us in Astrakhan. Soon we moved to the village of Narimanovo, where Father started to work as a zootechnician. By June 5 of 1942 Daddy was drafted to the army. We know, that he underwent training near Stalingrad in the city of Kamyshin, completed a short program for the officers of meteo-service in the army. We do not know how he died, but, of course, he did die, because his brother was making detailed inquiries about him. In the years that followed, Mum and me wrote to the state archive, but we found no indications about his fate.