This is my aunt Eshka Fruman, my mother's sister, with her husband, Naum Fruman.
The picture was taken on the occasion of their wedding in 1938 in Leningrad.
The seventh daughter of my grandparents, Eshka, was born in 1915. She went to school after the Revolution of 1917, studied at a Jewish school and lived in Slutsk. After finishing school, she left for Leningrad, entered the Leningrad Institute of Fine Mechanics and Optics and graduated from it in 1938.
She didn’t manage to defend her diploma, as she was assigned to work in Kazan, when the Great Patriotic War broke out. After the war she returned to Leningrad and defended her diploma in 1945. She worked as a teacher in navy schools at the places of her husband’s work; she taught engineering sciences. She worked at the Anti-aircraft school, the Navy school in Kronstadt until her retirement age.
Her husband, Naum Fruman, born in 1915, was her fellow-student, but as an undergraduate, he was taken to the Navy Academy, from where he graduated as a navy officer in the field of shooting directing equipment. Right after graduation from the academy he was assigned to work in Tallinn.
When the Great Patriotic War broke out, they managed to leave Estonia for Kronstadt with the last ship. Their ship was bombed en route and they were picked up by a Soviet ship which headed for the island. Thus they reached Kronstadt.
After that Naum worked at the Artillery Administration during the war and was transferred after the war to Kronstadt as a chief engineer for the Repair plant, where he worked until the Doctors’ Plot started in 1953.
In 1953 he was slandered in connection with the Doctors’ Plot, demobilized and fired from the Kronstadt plant. He came to Leningrad and couldn’t find a job for a rather long time. His classmates helped him find a position as principal designer in the ‘Azimuth’ company.
He died in 1999.
