My father's brother Naum Givand, is the last man on the left. The photo shows him with friends whose names and fates are unknown. Naum was born in 1912 and was killed in the war in 1941.
The families of my father's brothers, Israel and Naum, stayed in Kiev - they were too late to move out. Both families lived in one big flat, which occupied the whole floor of a house. There were 15 of them. One of the relatives worked in the People's Commissariat of the Interior, and she was promised a car to evacuate her family. But when the car arrived, it was too late: Kiev was already encircled. They had to return and all of them were shot in BabiYar.
It was while we were in evacuation in Tashkent that we learned about Babi Yar and the tragic fate of hundreds of thousands of Jews in the occupied territories, as well as about the fate of Isare's and Naum's families.
Rakhil Givand-Tikhaya's father's brother Naum Givand and his friends
The Centropa Collection at USHMM
The Centropa archive has been acquired by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. USHMM will soon offer a Special Collections page for Centropa.
Academics please note: USHMM can provide you with original language word-for-word transcripts and high resolution photographs. All publications should be credited: "From the Centropa Collection at the United States Memorial Museum in Washington, DC".
Please contact collection [at] centropa.org (collection[at]centropa[dot]org).