This is my mother, Etl Shubinskaya, nee Upendik, with my son, Boris Shubinsky. The photo was taken in 1952 in Kiev.
For a long time after the war I knew nothing about my parents. Later I learnt that my parents evacuated from Kiev. They left on their own, without any organization. I knew they were having a bad time at different evacuation destinations. I wrote to many places but couldn't get any certain information about them. I was looking for them for a long time. Only in 1943 I was informed that my parents were in Kazakhstan. My wife also went there. My father died there.
Our son Boris was born in 1948. My wife and I always spoke Yiddish to one another, and my mother always spoke Yiddish to her grandson. He was a good boy and a good friend of his grandmother. He is a mathematician now; he graduated from university, then finished some computer courses and now his work deals with computers. He supports Jewish traditions in his family.
Etl Shubinskaya and Boris Shubinsky
The Centropa Collection at 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 (collection[at]centropa[dot]org).