My father Vladimir Zorin at work during preparations for the October Revolution celebrations. The photo was taken in Kiev in 1937.
On Soviet holidays - anniversaries of the October Revolution and 1st May - my mother's friends visited us and we used to party. They sang revolutionary songs, Ukrainian and Russian ballads, recited poems and danced.
In 1934 the capital of Ukraine was transferred from Kharkov to Kiev, and my father was assigned to be director of the NKVD cultural center in Kiev. We received a big three-bedroom apartment in Rosa Luxemburg Street in Pechersk. [This was an elite neighborhood in Kiev where all government institutions were located and where high governmental officials lived.] It was a spacious apartment, and my father's parents and his brother Jacob moved in with us.
My parents spoke Russian, although Yiddish was their mother tongue. Sometimes my grandfather Aron visited us on my birthday. My birthday was often at the same time as Chanukkah and my grandfather gave me and my brother sweets and money. This is how I knew that we were Jews in my childhood and about Chanukkah, a Jewish holiday.
Engelina Goldentracht's father Vladimir Zorin
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