Gersh Kogan

This is my paternal grandfather Gersh Kogan. The photo was taken in Odessa in the 1890s.

My grandfather was born in the town of Zinkovtsy, Podolsk province, in the 1850s. My grandfather’s family was religious. They observed all Jewish traditions and my father was raised religiously. In the pictures I have of my grandfather, he wears traditional Jewish clothes, a beard and payot and a yarmulka or a hat. I don’t know what my grandfather did for a living. He died in the 1890s.