Nehuma Roizen

This is a picture of my mother Nehuma Roizen [nee Velikaya]. The photo was taken in Murafa in 1915. My mother's parents lived in Murafa village, Vinnitsa region. My grandfather, Velvl Velikiy, and my grandmother, Gitl Velikaya, were religious and observed all religious laws. They had three daughters and a son. My mother, the oldest daughter, was born in 1897. My mother went to Russian secondary school because there was no Jewish secondary school in Murafa. The tsarist government didn't allow Jewish children to study at the school. It was only for local non-Jewish kids. However, the count, my grandfather's employer, went to the director of the school and asked him to admit my mother. My mother was a very industrious pupil. Later other Jewish children were also allowed to go to school. My mother finished secondary school in 1916. My mother was the first of the sisters to get married. My grandmother Gitl was a distant relative of my father's mother Dina. A matchmaker offered my father to meet a girl from Kopaygorod. Once my father, his brother Velvl and some friends went to Kopaygorod. They stayed there until late in the evening, and since a snowstorm was approaching my father suggested to stay in Murafa overnight, in the house of his relative, my grandmother Gitl. My father told her about the purpose of his trip, and my grandmother said they didn't have to go anywhere else because she had a beauty of a daughter. My mother and father liked one another. They got married in 1921. My father was 12 years older than my mother. He arranged a great wedding party in Shargorod. My parents had a traditional wedding with a chuppah in the synagogue. My father rented a café for the wedding party. After the wedding my father took my mother to his house in Ozarintsy.