Evgenia Ershova's mother Sonia Gutianskaya with her her sisters Hontsia and Zlata Trahtenberg

Evgenia Ershova's mother Sonia Gutianskaya with her her sisters Hontsia and Zlata Trahtenberg

This photo, taken in Sobolevka, in the province of Vinnitsa, at the end of the 1920s shows my mother Sonia Trahtenberg (center), with her her sisters Hontsia Trahtenberg (right) and Zlata Trahtenberg (left). The sisters had this photo taken in commemoration of Hontsia's departure to Moscow. My mother was born in 1903. She finished her studies at the four-year Jewish elementary school and then probably continued studying with private teachers. My mother didn't have any certificates or diplomas, but she wrote very well in Russian and read a lot. I don't think my grandparents had other books besides religious ones at home. I guess my mother must have borrowed books from her friends or from the library. My mother's younger sister Hontsia, born in 1905, graduated from elementary school in Sobolevka. Around 1930 she went to Moscow and entered the Pedagogical Institute there. In Moscow she married a Russian man from Yaroslavl and moved to Yaroslavl with him. Her parents respected her choice and didn't have anything against this marriage. Hontsia became a primary school teacher. Her son Arkadiy lives in Yaroslavl. Hontsia died in the mid-1980s. My mother had another sister, named Zlata. I don't know whether she was my mother's younger or older sister. We have a photograph of my mother with Hontsia and Zlata. I know that after she got married, Zlata lived somewhere in the Vinnitsa region. During the war she and her children, along with other Jews of their town, were murdered, shot by the fascists. My mother was a reserved and tight-lipped woman. She never told me about them. It was probably emotionally too hard for her to talk about her sister. My mother also had a brother. His name was Iosif and he perished during the Civil War.
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