This is my older brother Moishe Gotlib. My brother was photographed on his birthday when he turned 15. This photo was taken in Sambor in 1936, I've always had this photo with me: I had it during the Great Patriotic War and now I have it in my family album as the only memory of my brother with whom we separated for good in 1945.
In 1937 my brouther Moishe became an apprentice in a railcar depot.In August 1939 German troops came to Poland and the Great Patriotic War began. We didn't see Germans in Sambor. We read in newspapers and heard on the radio about intervention of Soviet troops. We didn't know anything about the Soviet Union before. When Soviet troops liberated Poland from fascists Sambor and Lvov districts were annexed to the USSR. They became a part of the Ukrainian SSR. We were very happy about it. Moishe and I became convinced atheists and my mother and father were distressed by it. They kept observing Jewish traditions and we were telling them that they were holding to vestige of the past. Moishe worked as track foreman in depot.
I demobilized in early 1946. Railroad men from the Baltic Republics often came to Nida and they invited young locomotive operators to come to work there. They promised us lodging and good salaries, but I wanted to go back to Sambor where my family was. I didn't know that my parents and siblings emigrated to Israel in late 1945. Only my older brother Moishe stayed in Sambor. But we didn't meet with him: Moishe perished in early 1946. I didn't know about it for a long time. They wrote me, but I didn't receive their letter.
