Mirrah Kogan and her brother Haim Kogan with his teacher Anna Yakovlevna Naskhovich and his group mates

This is me and my brother Haim Kogan with my brother's teacher Anna Yakovlevna Naskhovich (Mairo) and my brother's group mates. The photo was taken in Odessa in the 1920s.

Munia was supposed to go to school in the early 1920s. That was shortly after the Civil War a hard period of famine and an epidemic of the Spanish flu that caused the death of many people. Going to school was out of the question. In 1922 my brother began to have private classes at home with Anna Yakovlevna Naskhovich, who was called Mairo at home for some reason. She was a very nice, short young woman. She had finished grammar school and was a very good teacher. She gave classes to my brother and to a few other children too. They had classes sitting at the dinner table in the dining room. I often sat under the table during classes and listened to them. Sometimes when the teacher asked questions and none of her pupils knew the answer, I answered the question from beneath the table. I was five and I learned to read at that time.