Rosalia Khananova

This is my older sister Rosalia Khananova, nee Voloshyna. This photo was taken in Kiev in 1939. My sister Rosalia - Reizl was her Jewish name - was born in 1913 in Uman. In 1921 she started a Russian eight-year school. I went to the same school in 1923. There was also a Jewish school in Uman, but my parents probably decided that my sister and I would have to continue our studies in Russian educational establishments and it would be easier if we went to a Russian school. After finishing school Rosalia entered a factory vocational school. After that she went to work at the mechanic plant in Uman. In 1937 Rosalia married Yevsey Khananov, a Jew. He worked as an architect in a design institute. He finished the Faculty of Architecture of Kiev Construction College. They had a civil ceremony in a registry office and a small dinner party with the closest relatives in the evening. After they got married my sister and her husband lived in Kiev separately from their parents. Their son Fred was born in 1938. During World War II my parents, my sister and her son were in evacuation in Bashkiria. They had a hard life especially in winter. They lived in a house and needed wood for heating it. A military registry committee provided sledges, a horse, a saw and an ax to people in evacuation, but they had to go cut trees and saw them in the woods themselves. Of course, it was too much for women to handle, but they survived somehow ? My parents and my sister and her son returned to Kiev in early 1946.