Boris Girshov’s sister and her schoolmate

Boris Girshov’s sister and her schoolmate

This photo was taken in Usvyaty in 1938 and shows my sister and her schoolmate Anna Brook.

Parents had got 3 children, I was the eldest (born in 1922), and my sister Nina (Nekhama) was born in 1925.

We studied at the same school. She actively helped mother about the house: tidied up rooms.

In 1941 she was 16 when the war burst out. Together with parents and our brother she left for Kuibyshev. In Kuibyshev there lived my mother's aunt Blume Rosenfeld (a sister of grandmother Hana).

At first my parents lived at hers, later they rented an apartment. Soon (in 1943) father died of tuberculosis.

Mother was still a young woman (43 years old); she worked as an unskilled laborer at a warehouse. In Kuibyshev my sister finished school and entered the Pedagogical College (faculty of foreign languages).

Her profession was a teacher of German language. The College did not stop studies notwithstanding severities of war. Nina graduated from it and became a good teacher. She spoke fluent German (I guess because she knew Yiddish), and started working at a Kuibyshev school as a teacher.

They sent her to a German school, where German children (children of people sent to Kuibyshev from Germany on business) studied. She taught them different subjects in German: geography, history, Russian language.

Later that school was closed, and she worked at ordinary secondary school teaching German language. She was a good teacher, and was considered an authority. They often sent her to Germany as a head of school delegations.

Her husband is Zakhar Solomonovich Braynin (we call him Zolya). Their son Sasha was born approximately in 1950. Sasha became a doctor. He graduated from the Medical College. He took his doctor's degree and at present works in Kuibyshev (now Samara) as a therapist. Nina's husband is a press photographer.

He worked in Pravda and Izvestia newspapers and also in local newspapers. He had a photo laboratory, worked at theatres of Kuibyshev, made highly artistic photos and photo advertisements. At present together with my sister they live in Israel.

They left there in 2000, being already pensioners. In Israel they live in Ashkelon.

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