Sarrah Muller’s husband Wolf Muller with his family

This is my husband's photograph - his stepmother Miriam Muller is the first on the right, Wolf and his little brother Leizer. This photo was taken in Kamenets-Podolskiy in the late 1930s, when Wolf was visiting with them. My husband always had this photo with him: this was the last photo of Miriam and Leizer.

My husband Wolf Muller 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.

During the war Wolf was recruited to the army. Shymon who had moved to Kiev in the late 1930s and was a cadet of the Kiev Artillery Military School, also perished in the first months of the war. Wolf's stepmother and Leizer also perished during mass shooting in Kamenets-Podolskiy. Leizer's Ukrainian friend offered him to escape, but Leizer didn't want to leave his mother. Fania who lived in Slavuta with her husband and children evacuated and survived. Her older daughter Mara died in evacuation, but her three other children managed.