Leonid Karlinsky's mother's family

This is a photograph of my mother's family, taken in Kharkov in 1936. In the top row (left to right): my mother, my mother's sister-in-law, Fania, the wife of mother's brother Mark, and on the end, my mother's younger sister, Ida. Middle row (left to right): my mother's older sister Ethel (Etia)and her daughter Asia; my grandmother holding my baby brother Vitia (Victor); Mark Tomchinsky and his son Vladimir. Bottom row, from left to right: me, Leonid (Lyonia); Etia's younger son Arkadiy; his brother Volodia Krapivnikov, and Fania's and Mark's older son, Arkadiy. Ethel was married to Mihail Krapivnikov, a Jew. He became one of the first managers of the Khakov tractor plant during the first years of the Soviet regime. The couple had four children: two girls, Asia and Fira, and two boys, Vladimir (Volodia) and Arkadiy. Vladimir, born in 1925, was a communications operator on the front. He was severely wounded and lost a leg. After the war he married the fiancee of a schoolmate who had perished on the front. He lived in Podmoskovie. In 1990 he emigrated to Israel. Arkadiy graduated from a tank school before the war. He received an offer to stay on at the school as a lecturer, but declined the position and instead joined the army, believing that a Jew had to be on the front line to avoid any reproaches or mean jokes. Arkadiy perished in his first battle not far from Kursk. Aunt Ethel and Uncle Mihail died in the mid-1960s in Kharkov. My mother's brother Mark was a member of the CPSU Town Committee Bureau in Kiev. Wen the war began he was responsible for the evacuation of enterprises from Kiev. He himself was too late to evacuate, and left the town with a group of his comrades when the Germans were very close. He and his comrades were captured in the Darnitsa Woods by the Germans, who then shot the communists and the Jews. Fania, Mark's wife, heard about his death from one of Mark's comrades, a Russian in this group who went through concentration camps and survived. Mark's older son perished during the war. His younger son Volodia lives in Israel.