Fania Brantsovskaya with her great-grandson Simon Safian

This is me with my great-grandson Simon Safian. The photo was taken in 2002 in Vilnius. In 1950 my first daughter, Vita was born in this apartment. This name means 'life' in Latin. This was what my husband and I valued to the utmost and what we paid a high price for. In 1956 we received a separate apartment on Gorkogo Street. This was one of the first houses with central heating in Vilnius. It was very cold in the first year. In 1958 my second daughter was born. We named her Dina after my husband's mother. The children went to a nursery school and a kindergarten. They had no grandmothers to help us raise them. We raised our children to be hardworking and modest. My daughters have had a good life. They finished school with gold medals. Both graduated from the Faculty of Cybernetics of Vilnius University, nine years one after another. There was no oppression on ethnic issues toward them. Vita defended her dissertation in Moscow. She works at the Ministry of Labor and Social Services. Her husband Mikhail Safian, a Jewish man from Minsk, is a mathematician. Vita's daughter Anna, born in 1975, works for a Norwegian/Lithuanian company. She is married to a Lithuanian man. Anna's son Simon is my great-grandson. He'll turn four in July.