Zenta Kanevskaya and her sister Margotte Supyan

This photograph was taken in 1953 in Leningrad.

I decided to have my picture taken together with my sister, Margotte
and we went to a photo-studio.

Have a look at my sister: she is a real beauty!

We returned to Leningrad in October 1945. It was necessary to begin life anew.
I was the elder and felt responsible for my sister.

My first post-war work was in the Pharmaceutical College. The director of the college offered me to enter the college, but I had to earn money for myself
and my sister. And my sister entered the Pharmaceutical Technical School.

She was housed in a hostel. After the end of her education she left for Priozersk
to work. There she got a room.

As for me, I had no place of my own for 14 years. I got my first room in a communal apartment in 1959. And in my present apartment I’ve lived since 1976. It is the second self-contained apartment in my life – the first one was in Berlin.

In 1948 I started work at the Krasnogvardeets factory, manufacturing medical devices. There I worked till 1980, when I retired. And again I was lucky with people. You know, after the end of the war, anti-Semitic campaigns were
launched by state authorities, and a lot of people suffered from it.

But at the Krasnoarmeets factory Georgy Moudanov was the director. He was Armenian and employed Jews, when already nobody did it. He also refused to
fire employees because of their nationality.

One day they summoned him to the regional Communist Party Committee and
said that at his factory the percentage of Jews among the employees was too high.

The director answered that he would prefer to be thrown out of the Party rather than fulfill their requirements. Among the citizens his factory had the reputation
of an institution where they gave jobs.

My sister was born on 18th May 1924 in Berlin. She was very beautiful, in contrast to me. She attended the same Jewish school as me. Later, already in Leningrad, before the war broke out, she managed to finish nine grades.

After the end of the war she entered a Pharmaceutical Technical School.
She finished it and worked as a pharmacist all her life: at first in Priozersk of Leningrad region, later in Leningrad, and then in Israel.

My sister was married twice. Her first husband was a camera-man. He was at the front line during the war. His name was Vladimir Alexandrovich Galperovich.
He shot films about the Leningrad region and traveled much around it.

Once, having arrived in Priozersk he met my sister and fell in love with her: she was a real beauty. Soon they got married, and moved to Leningrad. They lived in her husband’s apartment. Unfortunately Vladimir Alexandrovich died of a heart attack when he was only 57 years old.

In 1974 my sister got married for the second time. Her second husband was 13 years older. He was a hairdresser. His name was Abram Supyan.
In 1976 they immigrated to Israel.