Haya Lea Kats' family in summer residence

We are in our summer residence in Novostav in 1927.

I am sitting in the first row on the right, my brother Aron to the left of me and on a chair - my sister Bella. I am 7 years old, my brother is 8, and Bellochka is 2 years old.

In the second row in the hammock is my mum and beside her my daddy.
In the third row standing on the right are my Aunt Malka, mother's sister, and my elder sister Hava.

My mother Pesya-Mindlya Pinkhas-Leibovna Kats was born in 1897 in Rovno district. She was illiterate. All her life she was a housewife and she brought up four children. She was a very religious woman, and imparted all Jewish traditions to us.

Mother was executed in Rovno in 1941 at the age of 44. Mother had two sisters - Malka and Khana, both housewives, married and having children. All of them perished in the Rovno ghetto in 1941.

My Daddy, Nakhman Abramovich Kats, was born in 1895 in the city of Orokhov, formerly it was in Poland, I think. It is closer to Lvov. I had been to Orokhov once, when I was 4 years old, and I can not describe the place, because I hardly remember anything. He received a Jewish education in a cheder and studied there since 1900. In 1909 he finished a yeshiva in Orokhov.

Daddy received his rabbinical sanction, the "smikhot," but he never used it. He thought that he wouldn't be able to support his family that way,and he decided to become a stock broker.

Daddy was a member of his synagogue’s managing board. Stoloner is a Polish city. And "hosed" - that was the name for some Hasid. Father did not go to the army in the first war; he chopped off 2 toes on his foot and was exempted. Daddy was executed in Rovno in 1941, at the age of 46.

I do not know how my parents got acquainted and married. I shall tell you all I remember of my life. We were four kids in the family: Hava [1916-1960], Aron [1919], I and Bella [1925-1941].

I, Khaya Nakhmanovna Detinko, was born in 1920 in the city of Rovno in Poland. My childhood passed in awful conditions! The reason was the dampness of the premises where we lived at that time - in the cellar of Uncle Braker, he was mother's cousin and a well-known rich man of our town.

During that period we lived badly. A cooper lived in the courtyard who fixed barrels with hoops. The knock and rattle was heard from morning till night.