This is a class photo from my daugher's kindergarten, with pictures of Lenin and Stalin in the background. Tatiana is the fourth on the left in the first row. The photo was taken in Kiev in 1953.
Tatiana was born in 1949. Apparently because of anti-Semitism, my husband couldn't find a job for a long time, even though he was just an assistant shoemaker. So he signed a contract for a job in Sakhalin, in the Far North. I stayed in Kiev alone with our child. It was very difficult to place a child in a kindergarten. I claimed that my husband had abandoned us, so I could get the status of a single mother and my daughter could go to kindergarten.
Kindergarten that Frieda Portnaya's daughter attended
The Centropa Collection at 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 (collection[at]centropa[dot]org).