Naum Baru and his wife Evgeniya Baru

Naum Baru and his wife Evgeniya Baru

My wife Evgeniya Baru (nee Zats) and I. I met my future wife in Cherchik when I was still a student. In 1947 there was a big parade on Victory Day in Tashkent. They invited cadets and young people from Cherchik to take part in this parade. My distant relative Fiera (she was of the same age with me) lived in Tashkent. She had her birthday on 9 May. She invited me to her birthday party where I met her friend Zhenia Zats. I gave her the address of my school and we wrote letters for some time. Then at some time she came to visit me. That was how we got to know each other. Zhenia finished pharmaceutics school at the Tashkent Medical Institute. We got married in 1949. She was born in 1927 and both of us had birthdays in January. Zhenia was born in the village of Miastkivka, Kryzhopolskiy district, Vinnitsa region, Ukraine. In the early 1930s her parents left for Tashkent running away from the famine. They rented a clay hut in the Old Town. Zhenia's 3 brothers and 2 sisters were born there. Now they live all around the world: in Israel, the US and Germany. Zhenia's father was a driver. But his salary in Tashkent was not enough to make ends meet and he got a job in commerce. Her mother was a housewife. Zhenia's parents sometimes communicated in Yiddish. But their children didn't know Yiddish. They spoke Russian and Uzbek. But they all celebrated Purim, Rosh-Ah-Shanah and Pesah. They ate matsa, but they didn't go to the synagogue. We didn't have a wedding party. It was a civil registration ceremony and Zhenia's mother cooked a family dinner.

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