Sofia Rubinshtein with her sisters-in-law

My mother Sofia Rubinshtein (on the right) and my father's sisters Zina Skupnik (on the left) and Rita Shapiro (in the center). The photo was taken in Kharkov on the anniversary of my father's death in 1950. My mother took little interest in housekeeping. She was fond of reading. She read in Yiddish and Russian. She prepared for the grammar school by herself. She was the first child in the family and my grandfather was spoiling her more than the other children. My mother convinced him to send her to grammar school. He gave in, and she was the only girl in the family who finished grammar school. The rest of the children studied at a secondary school. My mother's sister Sarra was the only one to get higher education. She finished the Leningrad Institute of Chemical Industry in the 1930s. My parents met at the theater. My father came to Kiev on the invitation of Kiev University to lecture on psychology. My mother was a very elegant woman. She wasn't a beauty, but she was attractive. My father was a very handsome and elegant man. They fell in love with each other and got married in 1915. They had a small wedding party. They didn't have a Jewish wedding ceremony. After the wedding my father moved to Kiev. He became a lecturer on psychology at Kiev University. There was no anti-Semitism, and he got this job easily. My mother was a housewife. My father's three sisters, Zina, Sonia and Rita, were older than my father. My aunts were pretty and cheerful women. They all knew Yiddish, but they almost always spoke Russian. They finished a Russian lower secondary school in Uman. Sonia studied at the accounting school and got a job later. Zina got married to the chief engineer of the distillery in Kharkov and was a housewife. Rita was a housewife.