Anna Schwartzman's family and her friends

Anna Schwartzman's family and her friends

This poto was taken before my daughter Charna Galkin [nee Schwartzman] left for Moscow. Standing, left to right are my brother Ruvim's wife, Nina Barenboim, their son, Yankel Barenboim, two friends of my daughter Charna, our neighbor Aleksandr Keyselman, me, my brother Ruvim, my daughter Charna, and Buma Gutman, the husband of my childhood friend Rosa Gutman. Sitting are Rosa Gutman's niece, the wife of Rosa's brother, Asya Kresser, and my childhood friend Rosa Gutman. I met my future husband, Iosif Schwartzman, a Jew, in evacuation. After the war we moved to Chernovtsy. Our daughter was born on 24th January 1947. We named her Charna. She gave my life a purpose. I stayed at home with Charna until she turned 5. We had no one to help us, neither I nor my husband had parents any more. Charna never knew what grandparents are. I signed her up in a kindergarten and went to work for the Chernovtsy leather goods factory. I was hired as a lab assistant in a testing plant where new models of handbags were developed. My husband worked at the rubber shoe factory. Charna graduated from school in 1965 and started working as a teacher in a kindergarten while studying by correspondence in the English Department of the Romano-Germanic College at Kiev University. She graduated from university in 1971. I retired in 1979, and that same year my daughter got married. I don't know how and where she met her future husband, Nikolai Galkin. He was Russian and lived in Moscow. Charna moved there. Once a year she visited Chernovtsy. In Moscow she worked as a kindergarten teacher. She loved kids but didn't have any of her own. To my questions regarding her marriage, Charna's reply was always that everything was fine. Much later I found out from her girlfriend that her husband constantly beat her, and screamed that his Jewish wife had ruined his life. Unfortunately I only found this out after her death. She died from a heart attack in 2001. After her funeral and cremation in Moscow I took her ashes and buried them in the Jewish section of the cemetery in Chernovtsy. Hesed erected a tombstone on her grave. Next to Charna's name there is room for mine on this tombstone. There I will lie, beside my little girl, when it's my time. My brother Ruvim settled in Chernovtsy after the war and continued working in construction. He married and had a son named Yankel. Ruvim died in 1980.
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