Iosif Bursuk and his family

This is a family photo. From left to right, sitting: my older son Victor's wife, Victor, my wife Tatiana Testlina, our younger son Evgeniy, I and Evgeniy's wife. Evgeniy's sons are on the foreground. This was a family reunion on the occasion of my wife's birthday in 2001. The photo was taken in Chernovtsy. I'm the only one to have married a non-Jewish woman. My wife Tamara Testlina was born in 1932. She studied at the Medical Institute in Chernovtsy and we met there. We went on our job assignments upon graduation and got married in Donetsk in 1958. Later we returned to Chernovtsy. My wife's parents were schoolteachers. Her father was a teacher of physics and mathematics and her mother was a teacher of the Russian and Ukrainian languages. I can't say that they were particularly amused that their daughter married a Jewish man, but they accepted me. Tamara and I lived separately from her parents. Tamara's relatives had a different attitude towards our marriage. I felt comfortable at home with some of them and awkward with others. My parents accepted our marriage. Tamara became their favorite daughter-in-law. Our older son Victor was born in Donetsk in 1958. Victor left home at 17 when he entered the Military Engineering College of the Underwater Fleet in Leningrad. Upon graduation he was sent to the Northern Fleet where he became commander of division. Victor is a military sailor. He is a very intelligent man and he made a good career. He is Laureate of the State Award. He served in the Navy for 21 years and was transferred to the headquarters in Moscow. He, his wife and two sons live in Moscow. His older son studies at the medical institute and his younger son at the military college. Our younger son Evgeniy was born in Chernovtsy in 1961. Evgeniy and his family live with us in Chernovtsy. He followed into my footsteps and graduated from Chernovtsy Medical Institute. He is a doctor, a traumatologist. He is married and has two sons. Both of them study at the mathematical lyceum in Chernovtsy. When our sons obtained their passports in the 1970s we were to decide which nationality they would have written in their passports. My wife expressed her hope that I wasn't going to complicate their life by saying it should be Jewish. I gave in and we had their nationality written down as Ukrainian.