This is me, Irina Aizenberg, at the age of four month. This photo was taken in Odessa in 1929.
My parents got married in 1927. They had a civil ceremony. My mother said they couldn’t afford a wedding party. My father was against my mother’s going to work after they got married. My mother quit work and became a housewife. My parents never told me in what apartment they lived before I was born. I think they either rented a room or lived with some of their relatives.
I, Irina, was born on 3rd January 1929, two years after my parents got married. My parents were not religious. We only spoke Russian in the family. My father was a member of the Communist Party. When he joined the Party or for what reason was never discussed in our family. Shortly after I was born my father went to work as an accountant at the Headquarters of Odessa Railroad.
In 1933, my father got an assignment to go to a village near Odessa to work on the improvement of agriculture. My mother and I followed him there. We had a small house and kept livestock in that village. We kept a pig and a German breed cow with black spots. It gave 22 liters of milk per day. We left some for the family and gave the rest to the sovkhoz. My mother also kept geese, ducks and chickens, so we also had eggs. My parents told me that this livestock helped us to live through the period of famine in Ukraine in 1933. My father worked as an accountant in the sovkhoz and he also received food products for his work.
