Tsylia Rabinovich

This is a picture of my sister Tsylia Rabinovich (nee Falk), taken in Lviv in 1953. The photograph is signed on the back: 'To my dear and beloved brother'. My younger sister Tsylia was born in Korosten in 1933. We all lived in one room with our parents. We had a stove to heat the apartment. The stove was stoked with wood that was much cheaper than coal. There are woods around Korosten. Wood makes for good construction material for houses and is used for heating. There were two stoves in our apartment: one in the kitchen and one in the room. There was a Russian stove with a stove-bench in the kitchen. On cold winter days we, kids, loved to warm up on the bench. Tsylia wanted to study at Lviv Business College but failed at the exams. She passed her exams to Kuibyshev Business College and was admitted. After finishing college my sister returned to Lviv where she met her future husband, Evgeni Rabinovich, a Jewish man, a professional military. He was a captain and served in a military unit in Lviv. They didn't have a Jewish wedding. Their son Yuri was born in 1959. Evgeni moved from one location to another and my sister and their son followed him. My sister couldn't find a job since she was always on the move. In 1984 Evgeni demobilized and they settled down in Kharkov. Evgeni worked as a guard in a design institute. He understood that there were hardly any perspectives for him or his son to have a better life here [in Ukraine] and they moved to Nurnberg, Germany, in 1994. My sister and her husband were pensioners. They received accommodation and a pension. Yuri is an engineer in a company. My sister died in Germany in 2002. I don't know if her family observed Jewish traditions in Germany. And, unfortunately, I don't know if Tsylia had a Jewish funeral either.