Lubov Ratmanskaya, her brother Abram Ratmanskiy and younger sister Vera Bayburova

This is my brother Abram (on the left) and younger sister Vera (sitting) and me. The photo was taken in Vladikavkaz in 1912. My mother and father got married in Pogar. It was a small town. My father was involved in some revolutionary group, so he was given a false passport under the name of Pasternak and he was illegally sent to Tsaritsyn. My mother went with him. My elder brother Abram was born in Tsaritsyn in 1908. Later, the group that helped my father sent him to Vladikavkaz. It was some time around 1909. There was a good Jewish community in Vladikavkaz, but my father had a passport under the name Alexander Sokolov. [He was given this typical Russian name to hide his Jewish origin.] My sister Vera and I were born in Vladikavkaz. We weren't registered anywhere because my father was only able to register us later - that's why my passport says that I was born in 1911, whereas I was actually born in 1909. Vera was born in 1912. We were beautiful children. We lived in an underground flat, and my mother told me how scared she was every time the police came. The flat looked like a sewing workshop. My mother worked as a tailor and sewed dresses and some other things, pretending she had other sewers there, while my father embroidered. I remember when we already lived in Kiev and our house hadn't been bombed yet, I saw a postcard from some general's wife, saying 'Mrs. Sokolov, please prepare this and that for my arrival'. My mother was a fully-fledged member of the revolutionary organization.