This is my father Shulim Chubat's birthday certificate issued by a rabbi in the city of Izmail, Romania, in 1902.
My father was born on 13th August 1902, in a small city in Bessarabia, where my grandfather was teaching. My father finished cheder and a Jewish elementary school, which was customary for Jews. I don't know if he had any further education. I think my father was self-taught. He was well-read in colloquial Russian and Romanian, book-keeping, and simple mechanisms. He was bad at writing, though. The letters he wrote during the war were full of grammar mistakes. My father didn't serve in the tsarist army, though between 1920 and 1922 he was drafted into the Romanian army. I don't know what my father did for a living before he met my mother.
