Here you can see the three Sirota brothers. From left to right: Iosif, my father, Avraam and Lev. This photo was taken in Priluki in 1930.
My father’s brother Lev, called Buzia in the family, born in 1897, was a worker at the mechanic plant in Priluki. He joined the Party in 1924, when Lenin died and numbers of people applied to join the Party. This movement was called ‘Lenin’s appeal.’ He had a Jewish wife and a daughter and a son, whose names I don’t remember.
During the Great Patriotic War he was in the underground during the occupation. The Germans captured him and shot him for his Jewish origin. Actually, he didn’t do much for this underground movement. He was killed during a mass extermination of Jews in 1941. His family managed to evacuate to Siberia with the mechanic plant, thank God. After the war they lived in Belarus. Their son served in the army in the 1950s. He visited here and we met several times in the 1960s. I know that Lev’s son has passed away and Lev’s daughter is old already. She is single and lives in Priluki.
My father’s brother Iosif was born in 1905 and had a higher education. He finished Kharkov Higher Art College and was a good landscape artist. He lived in Kharkov in the east of Ukraine. At some time he was chairman of the association of artists of Kharkov. Iosif died in 1995. He had a wonderful family. They had three children. His wife died in the 1980s. His children, Elena and Semyon, live in Germany with their families. They emigrated in 1994, at the time when many Jewish families were moving abroad. Elena and her husband have a son, but I don’t remember his name. They are well accommodated in Germany, in Hanover. They don’t work, they live on welfare. Iosif’s younger daughter Nelly lives in Moscow.
