Lower row from left to right: daughter of Samuel Len, his wife's mother Dora.
Second row from left to right: Samuel, my father's brother, his wife Sophia.
The photo was taken in the courtyard of our house in Vsevolozsk, where we lived with grandmother Golda. Samuel with family came to have rest with us in summer.
My father, Yakov Naumovich Len, was born in Poland in the small town of Vogyn of Radzynsky district in 1910. In the Polish documents he was registered as Yankel Itskhak Len. He moved with his parents to Russia as a child in 1916 and lived at first in Samara and then in Leningrad.
His family supported his aspiration to acquire education. He entered the philosophical faculty of the Leningrad State University in 1934. Before university he was a fitter, worked for 2-3 years as a worker.
When he was a student of the 3rd year, philosophical faculty was liquidated for "sedition" [anticommunist dissident activity]. Students were offered to shift to the 3rd year of historical faculty, or to the 1st year of physical department.
Father chose the latter, which was why it took him so long to complete his studies - 7 years. During training he taught physics in an evening school.
His brother, Samuel Naumovich Len, was also born in Poland in the small town of Vogyn in 1915, was taken to Russia as a baby, lived in Samara, and from 1929 - in Leningrad. He was a sportsman, got enlisted in the Soviet Army as a volunteer and fought in the Great Patriotic War, was awarded with an order of Glory, numerous medals and after the war graduated from the evening branch of Machine-Building Institute at the Leningrad metal factory, where he worked in the department of the chief technologist.
He married Sophia, who was my second cousin. Sophia was a pharmacist by speciality. They had children: a daughter and a son. They all together left Russia for the USA in 1981. Samuel had emigrated to the USA in his pension age and died there in 1996. He is buried in New York.
