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This beautiful girl is Ani Sternschein, my cousin, Uncle Max Sternschein and Aunt Suzie's daughter. This photo was taken when she graduated from high school, you can see that she was wearing the scouts? uniform, with a tie and all. Ani was uncle Max's first child, she was some years older than her brother, Vili Sternschein.
Poor uncle Max was struck by grief and never really recovered when he lost Ani. When the Russians came, in 1940, Ani had just finished high school, she had passed her graduation exam. And Russians imposed that everybody who had graduated from high school was to go to Bessarabia to teach there. Uncle Max was desperate, but he couldn't do anything. So he married Ani in a hurry with a medicine student, one of her pretenders, so that she wouldn't be all alone and with no protection there. But the German front came, and they were massacred there, they weren't heard of again. He was still hoping to hear from Ani, his daughter. Uncle Max sent people to look for them, my mother kept asking everybody who went to or was coming from Bessarabia, and the answer was always the same: no Jews were left alive. Uncle Max had a very hard time accepting this, he adored his daughter.
