In this photo you can see Eli-Sheva Shif, my aunt. In the family they called her Liza. This photo was taken in Minsk in December 1918. She was born in 1895. In this picture she is 23. Eli-Sheva lived with her father and elder sister in Minsk. They were put in a ghetto and perished in 1943.
My father, Ilya Iosifovich Shif, came from a big family. Everybody spoke Yiddish and Russian in his family, and the elder brothers and sisters also had a good command of German and French. All the children were close. The family was a religious one and followed all the traditions.
My father was born in 1904 in Minsk. From 1911 until the Revolution [1917] he studied in a Jewish school in Minsk. From 1920 till 1926 he worked in Minsk as a worker.
His sister Sore-Elka was born in 1888, and after her mother's death she took the place of a mother for the younger children. She studied in Germany like her brother Elkona, and he and she visited Minsk on vacation. Sore-Elka got married to a certain Ura. She died in 1943.
Inna's aunt Eli-Sheva Shif
Centropa Collection acquired by USHMM
The Centropa archive has been acquired by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.
USHMM will soon offer a Special Collections page for Centropa.
Academics please note: USHMM can provide you with original language word-for-word transcripts and high resolution photographs. All publications should be credited: "From the Centropa Collection at the United States Memorial Museum in Washington, DC". Please contact collection [at] centropa.org.