Rosa Levina with her daughter Nadezhda Levina and her sister Evgenia Levina

From left to right: my mother Rosa Levina, nee Shatovskaya, my older sister Nadezhda Levina and my mother's sister Evgenia Levina, my father’s younger brother David's wife. There is a 'Pravda' newspaper on the table. This photo was taken when my mother and Nadezhda were visiting Evgenia in Mariupol, where she lived with her family, in 1926.

I don’t know how my mother met my father. They got married in 1908 and lived in Novovorontsovka. I don’t know whether they had a traditional Jewish wedding. After my paternal grandfather Iosif passed away my grandmother Hana came to live with my parents and lived with us for the rest of her life. My father worked in the village of Babino, some 10 kilometers from Novovorontsovka. He was a worker at a dock. My mother worked as a teacher.

My parents didn’t wear anything specifically Jewish. They wore common clothes like all other residents of the village. My mother wore dark dresses or a white blouse and a black skirt – his was how she thought a teacher should look like. My mother wore her thick, dark hair in a knot.

My father never told me about his childhood. All I know is that he and his brother studied in cheder in a neighboring village and this was all the education they got. They became workers. I don’t know where David worked. He married my mother’s younger sister Evgenia. They met at my parents’ wedding and got married shortly afterward. They had two children: daughter Vera, born in 1914, and son Alexandr, born one month after David died. David passed away in 1918. Evgenia never remarried. She dedicated herself to raising her children. She worked as a teacher in a Russian secondary school.

There were four children in our family. My older brother Lazar was born in 1910, his Jewish name was Leizer. I know that my brother was circumcised in accordance with the Jewish tradition. In 1913 my older sister Nadezhda was born, her Jewish name was Nechama. My sister Tamara was born in 1915, I don’t know whether she had a Jewish name.

I was the youngest child in the family. Once my mother told me that I was an unexpected child and she tried to get rid of this pregnancy. Since abortions were forbidden, my mother lifted weights and tried a hot sauna, but it didn’t work. I was born on 12th February 1918. I was named Polina and my Jewish name is Feiga.