Rachil Ghendler-Feldman

This is my mother Rachil Ghendler-Feldman. The photo was taken in Odessa in 1950. This is the last photograph of my mother. My mother, my first wife Valentina and I returned to Odessa from evacuation in Agdam in early 1945. We couldn't get our apartment back. All I had from our prewar belongings was my fork with an ivory handle. My mother got a small eight square meter room in Ekaterininskaya Street in the center of the town where we lived together. Semyon always slept in the same bed as his grandmother since there was no space to have another bed in the room. She recited poems of Nekrasov to him before his bedtime. The state anti-Semitism was strong in 1949-1953. An effect of it was the so-called Doctors' Plot which was made up by Stalin. But my mother wasn't afraid of working as a doctor at that time. She didn't make any comments in this regard, either. My mother worked until almost the last day of her life in the hospital in Moldavanka. She died in 1963.