Semyon Ghendler‘s mother Yelizaveta Ghendler and niece Irina Lukashevich

My mother Yelizaveta Ghendler (nee Oks) photographed in Rybinsk by my sister Polina's daughter Irina. My mother was visiting my sister in Rybinsk in 1958.

My mother didn't work before the Great Patriotic War because my father had an average income sufficient to make a decent living. But my father perished in 1941 near Kanev in 100 km from Kiev. My mother learned to type in evacuation in Cheliabinsk. In 1944 she went to work as a typist in an office in Zhitomir.

After finishing school my sister Polina finished mechanical school in Zhitomir. There she met her future husband Vladimir Lukashevich. He finished a military school and was sent to Rybinsk in Moldova. Their daughter Irina was born in Rybinsk in 1957. My mother went to my sister to help her raise her daughter.

My mother was alone for many years. In the middle of 1960s she married our distant relative Isaac Zhuravski. I was glad that my mother was not alone any longer. Living in Cheliabinsk I couldn't support her. However, their marriage lasted less than a year: Isaac was pathologically greedy and my mother divorced him. She lived in Zhitomir until 1990. When I returned from the North she moved in with me here. She remained an atheist even at her old age. She didn't observe Jewish traditions. She died in 1992. She was buried in the town cemetery and there were no rituals observed at her funeral.