Leah Ulanovski

Pictured in the photograph is my younger sister, Leah Ulanovski. The photo was taken in Tallinn in 1937.

My younger sister was born in 1933. She was named Leah in memory of our father's mother. According to Jewish tradition, the first daughter is named after her maternal grandmother, and the second one after her paternal grandmother. When I was born, my mother's mother was still alive, and a child can't be named after a living relative, so I was named after my mother's grandmother. Her name was Simhe, but my name was recorded in a more modern manner: Sima. Leah was a happy and obedient child, and everyone in the family adored her. As an infant she had poor health, she had pneumonia several times and the doctors recommended that she spent summers away from the sea. So we rented a summer house in Hiiu, near Tallinn, for several summers. The house was in the middle of a pine forest: it was supposed to be good for her lungs. My sister, my mother, and I lived there, and my father came there every evening. Before that period, my mother and I went to the countryside every summer.