This is my maternal grandfather Yefim El'bert. This photo was taken in Belaya Tserkov in 1908.
My grandfather was chief doctor of the town hospital in Belaya Tserkov and had private practice. He often visited countess Branitskaya living in a nearby mansion and often patients from Kiev came to see him.
Grandfather Yefim was chairman of a local club. Once the wife of one of his doctors asked my grandfather to talk to her husband who was not good in his family. My grandfather tried to talk to him when they were playing billiards. That man got angry: 'Do you think you can issue orders in this club as if it were a hospital? This is not your business!' My grandfather was very kind, but quick-tempered. He threw a billiard ball onto the floor with such strength that it cracked. Later some students who were on training in my grandfather's hospital, brought this ball to my mother and told her the story. Everybody laughed. That man came to apologize to my grandfather later.
