Grigory Bekker with his wife Raissa Bekker

This is my mother's older brother Grigory Bekker with his wife Raissa Bekker. The photo was taken in Gomel in 1926 where he got a job assignment upon graduation from Kharkov University. My maternal grandparents, Issac and Sarah Bekker, nee Mirochnik, had more than ten children. Only three survived: my mother's older brother, Grigory, born in 1898, my mother Evgenia born in 1902, and my mother's younger sister Polina, born in 1908. Their Jewish names were Gersh, Genia and Perl, respectively. All three children studied in a grammar school in Odessa when they were nine or ten years old. It was a private school. There were separate schools for boys and girls. Rybnitsa was 150 kilometers from Odessa and during their studies the children lived in the boarding school, which had classrooms, a canteen and bedrooms for few pupils. My mother's older brother Grigory got married upon graduation from the Medical Faculty of Kharkov University and got a job assignment to Gomel in Belarus. His wife, Raissa, a Jew, also studied at Kharkov University - two years junior. When Grigory got a job assignment in Gomel, Raissa quit the University and followed Grigory. She had completed three years of medical education and worked as a nurse. Grigory and Raissa weren't religious. They had three sons. During the Great Patriotic War Grigory was a military doctor at the front. After the war he and his wife visited us in Rybnitsa. This was our first meeting after many long years of separation. In the last years of his life Grigory had lung problems. Doctors advised him to get a change of climate. He and his wife moved to the town of Reni in the south of Moldova. His children didn't move with him. He died there in the 1960s. His wife and children moved to Israel in the 1970s.