Klara Dovgalevskaya's brother David Dovgalevsky

This photo, taken in Kiev in 1931, shows my brother David Dovgalevsky before his call-up to the army. Before his army service David was a worker in Kiev. He was called up in 1931. Right before the war [the Great Patriotic War] the atmosphere was disquieting because of talk about Hitler. I did not read newspapers, so I don't remember now if there was any information about Hitler's negative attitude towards the Jews. I think my mother knew about it from newspapers and was very anxious. David was mobilized even before the war. He was in the reserve. In the mid-1960s, my brother Pinya met a man who said he knew David Dovgalevsky. He said he was together with him in the encirclement of Kiev and in the camp for prisoners of war in Darnitsa [industrial zone of Kiev]. Thousands of Soviet prisoners of war were kept under the open sky, without food, without water in that camp. Many people died every day. Their relatives saved many of them, though. Ukrainians were saved by their wives and mothers, who paid for their release in gold and valuables. That's how that man got saved. But David was killed, because all the Jews were killed there. That's what that man told my brother.