Leib Redko with his great-granddaughter Zhanna Lifshitz

My father Leib Redko with his great-granddaughter Zhanna, the daughter of Sophia Lifshitz (nee Ostrovskaya), my niece, my older sister Esther's daughter. I photographed my father while he was having a stroll with Zhanna in the yard of our house. This photo was taken in Kiev in 1960. My father worked as a tinsmith. He left home early in the morning to work in the streets fixing casseroles and wash tubs that housewives brought him. He earned very little, but at least we could survive. My father fell severely ill in 1939. There was something wrong with his legs, he couldn't walk and became an invalid. He could not work any longer. His doctor, a surgeon, told him there was no cure for him. When World War II began my father could hardly walk, but he still tried to walk out to find some work to do, but there was a long time before my father finally got a job of water carrier in the school of assistant doctors where it was too hard for him to work alone and I was helping him. In 1960 my wife and I received our first apartment. It was a communal apartment and we had few neighbors. In 1968 my wife and I received a separate apartment in Rusanovka that was a new district in Kiev then. Now it is a well established district on the bank of the Dnieper. We have no children. My father lived with us. He died in 1973. He was buried in the Jewish sector of the Berkovets cemetery in Kiev. My niece Sophia, Esther's daughter, married Boris Lifshitz, a Jewish man. Her only daughter Zhanna was born in 1959. Sophia was a housewife. Esther was severely ill and was bedridden. Sophia tended to her. In 1979 Zhanna move to Israel. Her parents stayed in Kiev. We were against Zhanna's departure, but now I understand that she did the right thing, when she made her decision. We correspond with her. Now Zhanna lives in New York. She is doing well. Zhanna is married. She has two children: her daughter was born in 1992 and her son in 1997.