Fania Brantsovskaya and her family

This is our family. From left to right: me, my mother Rohl Joheles, nee Galunskaya, and her brother Motl Galunskiy with his daughter, whose name I don?t remember. I don't know the girl in the center of the photo. Our Lithuanian neighbor kept this photo and our other belongings during the occupation. This picture was taken in Varena in 1926. My mother came from the town of Varena at the border of Lithuania and Poland. She was born in 1901. I think she finished two or three grades of elementary school, but I don't know any details. My parents had their wedding in Varena on 22nd July 1921. My parents got married under a chuppah at the synagogue and had a traditional Jewish wedding. It couldn't have been otherwise in Jewish families at the time. My parents rented an apartment in Kaunas. I was born on 22nd May 1922 in Kaunas. I was named Feige, but since my early childhood everybody called me Fania, which is a Russian name. Mama told me she got severely ill when I was born. She had to send me to my grandfather and grandmother in Varena where I lived the first year of my life. My grandparents often showed me my parents' pictures in a photo album, and when my parents came to pick me, I said 'Mama, papa - album'. My mother's brother Motl lived in Kaunas. Motl became an electric mechanic. He had one daughter. Motl and his family perished during the Great Patriotic War.