Bella Kisselgof 's father Grigory Kisselgof

My father Grigory (Gersh) Kisselgof in a photo taken in Enakievo in 1931. My father was born in the village of Novo-Vitebsk in the province of Ekaterinoslav (Dnepropetrovsk region) in 1903. Several generations of my ancestors lived in Novo-Vitebsk. My father finished eight years of secondary school in Novo-Vitebsk. He didn't have any professional education. My father was intelligent and had good organizational skills. I know very little about his family. In 1941, at the beginning of the war, he went to the front and perished there in 1943. While he was still with us I was too young to show any interest in the family history. After he died his family terminated thier relationship with my mother. My mother avoided the subject of his family. So, I don't even know the name of my father's mother. My grandfather's name was Mordko, and later he was called Mark. I also know that my father had a brother named Lyova and a sister named Dvoira. My parents lived for a short time in Gorlovka, in a huge wooden barracks with many rooms on both sides of a long corridor. Mama worked as a typist at the Department of Mines and my father had logistics work. Soon my parents moved from Gorlovka to Enakievo. Mama was a housewife, and Papa worked at the headquarters of the mine 'Red Profintern' located in Verovka in the outskirts of Enakievo. I was born in 1936. Our family lived in a small, shabby wooden house at 139 Partisanskaya Street. My parents spoke Russian in the house, but switched to Yiddish only when they wanted to keep something a secret from me. After the revolution my parents became atheists. We didn't celebrate holidays or observe Jewish traditions in the house. I was also raised an atheist and an internationalist. Such was our era. I remember going to the post office every day to check whether there was any mail for us. I was a little girl and they recognized me at the post office and gave me all our family's letters. Papa's letters were rare. Mama wanted to send a photograph of us to Papa, but we didn't know the number of his field mail. We kept the photo and Mama used to say that we would send it soon. In 1943 after the battle of Stalingrad we received notification that my father had been killed.