Sarrah Muller’s husband Wolf Muller with his brothers Shymon Muller and Leizer Muller

This is my second husband Wolf Muller (in the center) with his brothers Shymon (left) and Leizer Muller (right). This photo was taken in Kamenets-Podolskiy in the 1930s, when Wolf was visiting his parents.

I loved theater. There was an amateur Jewish theater in Kamenets-Podolskiy before the WWII. Young people of all nationalities staged Jewish, Ukrainian and Russian classics in the ‘Sovrabotnik’ [Soviet worker] club. Sholom Aleichem’s ‘Tevie the milkman’ was the hit (my future second husband Wolf Muller and his brother Gershl also played in this theater).

I remembered my husband: he and his brother Gershl actively participated in the Jewish theater that I ran to when a girl. Wolf and Gershl played in the theater and Gershl having an absolute ear for music, also worked as a prompter for touring theaters. Later Gershl moved to Kiev and Wolf followed him. During the war Wolf was recruited to the army, but since he had osseous tuberculosis he served in the headquarters of the South western Front for a year and a half and in the end of the war he worked in the labor army in a mine in Siberia from where he returned to Kiev. His father Moshe died shortly before the war. Gershl perished in Kiev at the very beginning of the war - he was a flak gunner.

In 1946 I was introduced to Wolf Muller from Kamenets-Podolskiy, whom I married soon. My husband's story is worth hearing. Wolf was born in Kamenets-Podolskiy in 1911. His family was miserably poor. Misfortunes were falling on them like from cornucopia. Wolf's father Moshe Muller was an accountant, but only had occasional jobs. The family was so poor that the children dreamed of getting ill: when then fell ill, their parents bought milk for them. In 1920 Wolf's mother, Miriam the beauty, died from typhus within few days. Wolf's youngest sister Beba also died with her. There were four children left: Gershl, Grigoriy, my husband Wolf and their sister Fania, two years younger than Wolf. Moshe cared about his children and missed Miriam terribly. He was a very good father. Moshe's sister, whose name was forgotten, took care of the orphans. Her husband had left for work in Poland many years before and stopped writing from there. The woman who didn't speak Russian, Polish or German went to look for her husband. She traveled across Poland and Germany before she got to England where she found her husband who had married another woman long before. She divorced him and returned to her town. She decided to dedicate herself to her brother's children. She made wigs for Jewish matrons and supported the family. However in due time … Moshe remarried. His young wife's name was Miriam as well. The children's aunt got angry and talked to the children against the young stepmother. Grigoriy didn't like his stepmother and left his home at an early age. Wolf and Fania loved their stepmother with all their heart. They called her 'mother' and this was who she was for them. Wolf got two brothers: Shymon and Leizer, whom she had from Moshe. They were sweet, and Leizer, the youngest, was very handsome.

My husband's family was very religious. Wolf went to the synagogue with his father from early childhood. The children studied in cheder school and received Jewish education. Shymon and Leizer had a melamed to teach them at home since there were no melamed teachers in the Soviet time. Wolf studied at school a few years. When he turned 11, and the family was starving, he was sent to become an apprentice of confectioner Itzykovich. Probably Wolf had a talent to this vocation since he became a highly skilled confectioner. During the famine in 1933 Wolf actually rescued the whole family.