Lubov Rozenfeld’s mother Sophia Rozenstein

My mother Sophia Rozenstein in the role of Chio-Chio-San, My mother must have given the same photo to her teacher Olga Vekker in 1949. The photo is signed: To dear Olga Davidovna from her grateful student Sonia. 8/X - 1949.' This photo was taken at a rehearsal in 1930.

My mother Sophia Rozenstein lost her father at the age of four and began to work at an early age selling oil and sunflower seeds in Kiev. During the Civil war my mother lived through several pogroms in Skvira. During pogroms Jewish families found shelter in the judge's home whose name I don't remember, regretfully. During one pogrom my mother didn't want to go to the judge's home and dragged Yuliy to a frozen swamp where they lay on the ice all night through. The pogrom makers didn't come to the swamp. Bela and Dosia hid in their neighbor's home. After the pogrom the family returned to their plundered home, but they all survived. My mother told me that armed villagers were opposing to pogrom makers. At 14 my mother went to work as a courier at the sugar supply office in Kiev. She attended an amateur performers' club. She told me they studied singing, dancing, dressing and washing there. They staged play and had lots of fun. My mother used to say: 'Who would have I become if it hadn't been for the revolution? would have sold things at the market in the sticks'. My mother had a strong voice. She went to study singing at a music school and later - at the College of music and Drama. After finishing this college my mother went to work as chief editor of music radio programs at the radio committee where she met my future father Mikhail Rozenfeld. They registered their marriage at a registry office in 1935. They were atheists and didn't have a Jewish wedding. My mother didn't want to change her surname from Rozenstein to Rozenfeld: 'Why trade bad for worse?' My father felt hurt…