Efim Zhornitskiy with his own family and his brother Vladimir Zhornitskiy with his wife Fira Shornitskaya

Efim Zhornitskiy with his own family and his brother Vladimir Zhornitskiy with his wife Fira Shornitskaya

My family and my brother with his wife. My brother's wife Fira is the first on the left, my brother Vladimir is next to her, then comes my daughter Emma, I and my wife Julia. The photo was taken in Odessa in 1953 when my brother and his wife visited us.

I met my wife in the hospital in Tbilissi where I was recovering from my wound during the war. Julia was senior nurse there. She was tall and beautiful. She was very kind and caring. I was released from hospital on 29 June 1945. On the same day the doctors and nurses arranged a wedding party for us in the apartment of Julia's best friend. In August we came to Odessa. We were trying to get an apartment. The military commandant of the town helped us to get a two-room apartment. Our older daughter Emma was born in 1946. I graduated from the Institute of Sea Transport Engineers in the summer of 1947. I got a job assignment in the newly established design office of the Black Sea Fleet. I worked there for 40 years.

My brother Vladimir was wounded several times at the front. He finished the war in Germany as commandant of a town. He demobilized and returned to Dnepropetrovsk University. He married Fira Levandovskaya. Upon graduation from the university he got a job in a scientific research institute in Sverdlovsk. He lives there with his wife. They have no children.

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