Lidia Lieberman and her parents Moisey and Vera Lieberman

This is me, Lidia Lieberman, and my parents Moisey and Vera Lieberman. This photo was taken in Moscow in 1930.

My father Moisey Lieberman was born in Zvenigorodka, Kiev province, in 1893. He finished the Commercial College in Kiev in the 1910s and became an accountant. He worked as an accountant for his father in Zvenigorodka. I have no information about his life during the October Revolution or Civil War. In 1928 my father visited grandfather Yakov's acquaintances in Shpola where he met their niece Vera Ostrovskaya, my future mother who came to visit them from Odessa.

My mother Vera Ostrovskaya, born in Shpola in 1905, was 12 years younger than my father. I know that my mother studied in a grammar school in Odessa. She could speak French. I remember her speaking French with Abram, the younger brother of my father, when he visited us after the war. In the early 1920s my mother had a fiance in Odessa who was a member of the Party. One day after the Great Patriotic War my mother and I met this man when we were having a walk in Alexandrovski park. I told my father about it. He was a jealous man, but he knew my mother's honesty and decency and there wasn't much ado about it. In 1928 my mother met my father when visiting her aunt in Shpola.

My parents got married in Moscow where my father got a job in 1928. They had a Jewish wedding with a chuppah on 6 November, in Moscow. They also had a civil ceremony. I was born in Moscow in 1929. I lived there with my parents until I reached 4. I remember little about our life in Moscow: my father went to work and my mother read to me, played and walked with me. I liked playing with dolls. Then we moved to Odessa. We lived in a room in a house on the corner of Malaya Arnautskaya and Soviet army Streets and then we moved into a 3-room apartment in Proviantskaya Street that was later renamed to Astashkin Street. We had two connected rooms with a balcony and one separate room where my paternal grandfather Yakov lived. I liked to come to my grandfather's room and look at his desk. My father was an accountant. My mother was a housewife. My father believed a woman had to be at home and look after children. My mother got up very early in the morning. When I got up she had already done shopping at the market and other house chores. My mother liked embroidery. She liked to alter old clothes making an apron, for example, from an old piece. We didn't have a sewing machine so then she sewed with hands. I also learned to do stitch work. I've always liked it. My parents observed some of Jewish traditions. They always observed the Day of Atonement [Yom Kippur] and fasted every year. On Friday evenings my mother made delicious dinner and lit candles. At Pesach we used fancy crockery. Mother cooked gefilte fish and cooked dishes made of matzah. We often visited my mother's parents on high holidays. Grandfather Yakov went there with us. We spoke Russian at home. Only my father and grandfather spoke Yiddish sometimes. At that time Yiddish was called a 'jargon'.