Faina Khorunzhenko's father Lev Levinson and his older sister Lyuba Levinson

My father Lev Levinson and his older sister Lyuba. The photo was taken in Novoukrainka approximately in 1915. My father's sisters, aunts Sonya, Lyuba and Manya received an education, which was considered very good for women - they graduated from something like a pro-gymnasium, a junior course, because it was very hard for Jewish children to get accepted into a school, even a private one. My father graduated from the College of Commerce. He worked as an economist in the system of central work cooperatives. Our financial situation was not bad: there were no super incomes, but it was enough for us to live on. During the Civil War [1918-1921], my father's neighbor betrayed him, and my father had to spend two days at the camp of Denikin. Then they took him to be shot. I don't know why, but there was another man, a Russian, who was about to be shot as well, Vladimir Ivanov. Denikin's gang was retreating - the troops of Kotovsky attacked them. My father crawled to the house, called, but my mother could not open the door, because it opened to the outside. My father fell in front of it, and his body would not allow the door to open. Anyway, she opened that door somehow, stepped over my father and ran to get a doctor. The doctor, Mikhail Mikhailovich Mikhailovsky, lifted my father up and helped him come to his senses. As he was leaving, my mother asked him, ?What's wrong with Lyova?? He hugged her and said, ?Daughter, he has the heart of a 100-year-old man?. After that, my father only lived for seven more years. I can say that I received his last breath. I went to school at the time, in 1927, because my father knew that he was dying and he really wanted me to study. So he asked his good friend, who was a school director, to accept me earlier than they usually did. On that day I stayed at home - for some reason my mother didn't let me go to school. My father was in bed, and I was sitting in another room, drawing. Suddenly he called me and said, ?My dear daughter, let me kiss you?. I gave him my lips, and he said, 1Do not kiss me on the lips for they are already dead?. He kissed my forehead, and was gone? It was 3 p.m. on 5th October 1927. I saw my father when he was wrapped in his tallit, if I'm right, but I was not present when he was being taken out of the house. I only know and remember that my mother sat on the floor and slept on a carpet for seven days, just as she should.