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Ella Lukatskaya and her grandmother Haya-Ita Smertenko

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Haya-Ita Smertenko, my grandmother and my mother's mother, and I. Photo made in 1938 in Kiev.

In 1930s only four of my grandmother's 10 children stayed alive. She lived in Kiev with two of them: her son Max and my mother. All of us lived in one room.  My grandmother helped my mother about the house. She died before WWII. She rescued our life by dying. If she had lived longer we wouldn't have been able to evacuate during the war (my grandmother couldn't be moved) and would have stayed in Kiev ending in the Babiy Yar most evidently.   

So, I was born in 1938. I was a 2nd child. There were five of us living in that small room in Gorky street: 2 children, my mother and father and our elderly grandmother Haya-Ita. I can hardly remember her. I have pictures of her, though.  

Centropa Collection acquired by USHMM

The Centropa archive has been acquired by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. 

USHMM will soon offer a Special Collections page for Centropa.

Academics please note: USHMM can provide you with original language word-for-word transcripts and high resolution photographs. All publications should be credited: "From the Centropa Collection at the United States Memorial Museum in Washington, DC". Please contact collection [at] centropa.org.