The birth certificate of Jacob Goldenberg

The birth certificate of Jacob Goldenberg

Birthday certificate of Jacob Goldenberg:

‘Birthday certificate.

Issued by Rabbi of Sevastopol eparch duly signed and stamped stating the following in the birthday record of Sevastopol Jews: deed fi 52: Son Jacob was born on 10 July, circumcised on July, 5 1881 in Simferopol.

Father is Adolf Yakovlevich Goldenberg residing in Simferopol and mother is Doba Dora, Solomon Malinskiy's daughter.

The twenty-third of September of the year of eighteen ninety-nine, the city of Simferopol.’

My ancestors settled in the Crimea long before I was born. My father's generation - Jacob Goldenberg's lived in Simferopol [about 1350 km to the south from Moscow].

My parental great grandfather Shlema Malinskiy settled in Simferopol in 1856 after his army service in Sevastopol was over [Sevastopol is about 1430 km to the south from Moscow]. He was in the Black Sea Fleet of the tsar's army during the Crimean war.

By the tsar's decree Jews, who had defended Sevastopol were entitled to settle in that city. [In Tsarist Russia Jews were allowed to settle only in the Jewish Pale of Settlement, apart from merchants and doctors, who were permitted to settle in larger cities too. This case an exception was made based on military merits.] That is why my ancestors settled in Crimea.

My father Jacob Goldenberg was born in 1881 in Simferopol. He lived in Simferopol before finishing lyceum in 1899. The same year the widowed grandmother sent my father to Paris to his elder brother Moses (Michel) Malinskiy.

My father studied at Sorbonne university at physics and chemistry department. He graduated in 1900 and entered medical department. He graduated medical department in 1909.

Thus, my father managed to graduate from two universities- scientific and medical. In the period of 1905 - 1909 he specialized in cutaneous diseases and syphilis, cutaneous tuberculosis. He was also involved in science.

In 1909 he went back to Russia. He worked in Saint-Petersburg hospital.

In 1911 he took an exam in Kazanskiy university to start practicing medicine.

In 1912 and 1913 he worked as a doctor in venereal and urological department of Simferopol ambulatory. He equipped his office with diagnosis devices at his own cost. Father was not religious.

To begin with, the family that brought him up, did not stick to any religious traditions, and cognition of natural sciences did not bring him to religious self-consciousness.

Father was loved by everybody from his surroundings. He was strict and exigent to me, but still he loved me very much. Father had wonderful sense of humor, he gave everybody nicknames. He called me jokingly a fool.

We had an elderly house-keeper. He called her a hex. Some of our relatives were a little bit hoity-toity, and he called her an empress. He was smart , benevolent and willing to help.

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