Serafima Staroselskaya's cousins Galya Bogorad and Edith Vigdergaus

These are my cousins, Galya Bogorad (to the right) and Edith (almost to the left on the tree) and their mother Maria - the family of uncle Yakov Borukhovich Vigdergaus, who perished during the war. My mother was born in 1915. When mother was a little girl, her elder brothers and sisters began to leave home. They began to move to Leningrad in the 1920s, as a lot of Jews, who lived beyond the 'Jewish pale' before the Revolution. Mother lived in Nevel up to 1930. She finished a Russian school there and was the last to leave among the other kids. She was 15 years old at that time. Elder sisters already had babies and elder mom's nephews were 10 years younger then herself. She even nursed them, because they were always brought for summer to Nevel to stay with grandparents. Only in winter, when everyone left for Leningrad, mother remained alone with her parents. Mother's brother Semyon (Shlyoma) finished the Red Commissars' courses. There was also brother Yakov. He perished at the Leningrad frontline, other brothers also participated in the war there. Yakov was the only one who perished. He left two daughters who were born before the war, Galya and Edith.