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My mother, Rakhil Osipovna, Gorovits-Vaisbrot, was born in the town of Zamos, Lublin province, in 1891. Her father was an official rabbi in Zamos. This town was located in Poland, but at the time it was part of the Russian Empire. My mother finished Russian secondary school without attending every class because being a religious Jew and the daughter of a rabbi she couldn't go to school on Saturdays. Nevertheless, she finished the Russian school with a gold medal, that is all excellent marks.
She met my father at the wedding of their relatives in 1911: my father's niece and my mother's cousin got married. After meeting at the wedding my parents kept up a very active correspondence over the course of three years. We kept those letters at home in two stacks tied with ribbons until the war. All their letters were written in Yiddish. I glanced through them often, not understanding what they said, but judging from the dates they exchanged letters practically every day. They got married in spring 1914.
Immediately after the wedding they went to live in Kamenets-Podolsk, where my father wanted to buy a printing shop because he was a professional linotypist. But two or three months later World War I began. So, they moved to Yekaterinoslav. At the same time, my grandfather's family came there: my mother's parents with two of their children: their daughter Iokhevid and their son Leibele.
She met my father at the wedding of their relatives in 1911: my father's niece and my mother's cousin got married. After meeting at the wedding my parents kept up a very active correspondence over the course of three years. We kept those letters at home in two stacks tied with ribbons until the war. All their letters were written in Yiddish. I glanced through them often, not understanding what they said, but judging from the dates they exchanged letters practically every day. They got married in spring 1914.
Immediately after the wedding they went to live in Kamenets-Podolsk, where my father wanted to buy a printing shop because he was a professional linotypist. But two or three months later World War I began. So, they moved to Yekaterinoslav. At the same time, my grandfather's family came there: my mother's parents with two of their children: their daughter Iokhevid and their son Leibele.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Deborah Averbukh