Sinay Sivashinsky with his nephews

This is my mother's uncle, the brother of her father Moisey, Sinay Sivashinsky with his nephews.

First row from left to right: Serafima or Sima Gutman, nee Sivashinskaya, my mother's sister. Second row from left to right: Sinay Sivashinsky, Vulf Sivashinsky, my mother's brother; and my mother, Frida Dembo, nee Sivashinskaya. The girls are holding flowers and Sima is holding a toy.

The picture was obviously taken in honor of uncle Sinay's visit in 1911 in Saint-Petersburg.

Sinay Sivashinsky was an important economist and worked in a bank in Leningrad. He was arrested in 1937-1938 [during the so-called Great Terror] and served time in the camps of Solikamsk.

He spent ten years there and was rehabilitated after Stalin had died [Rehabilitation in the Soviet Union]. His elder son perished at the frontline.

His younger son, a doctor, was also in the war, but survived. He lives in Moscow now, has a daughter from his first marriage and a son from his second marriage. Sinay also moved to Moscow during his last years, where he died in the 1970s.

My mother Frida Moiseyevna Dembo, the eldest child in the family, was very elegant, fine-molded. She was a sociable person, very communicative and artistic.

She had an imperious temper, as all Sivashinskys, sometimes she was a despot, she liked to have everything done her own way. However, at the same time she was rather delicate and did not worm herself into anybody's soul.

Her brother Vulf, born in 1904, was a very talented person. Being a chemical engineer, he engaged himself with such a boring subject as processing secondary scrap.

Uncle Vulf had a sense of humor and liked good literature. He was a man of high culture, but uncontrollable and hot-tempered. It was good that his hot temper was restrained by the culture.

My mother's sisters Serafima, or Sima Gutman was born in St. Petersburg in 1907. She finished the pharmaceutical technical school in 1924 and worked at the Blood Transfusion Institute as a laboratory assistant.

She was a very intelligent biochemist. Aunt Sima was an angel by temper. She never spoke loudly, she was always very tender, smiling, cordial and sympathetic