My great sister Sonia, daughter of my mother’s sister, Leia. The photo was made on front in 1941.
The mother’s eldest sister, Leah, married a man ill with tuberculoses. He took her out of Khorol into a village in Poltava region. He was Jewish and a talented man. She bore seven children from her ill husband. He soon died. She had no profession, so she learned to sew and her children worked the soil since early age; her boys also fished and thus they did not starve to death, but they were very poor. They had only one pair of shoes for all the children, so they went to school in turns. The boys walked barefoot even in winter. But they survived. The girls, Rosa and Sonya were put into basement to hide from Denikin soldiers, so they had problems with their legs and feet for the rest of their lives. Sonya worked as a doctor and Rosa - as an engineer in Kharkov.
