Bertha Jafet with her husband Rafail Jafet and his sister Mania Dinerman

From left to right in this photo are my mother Bertha Jafet, my father Rafail Jafet, his sister Mania Dinerman. The picture was taken in the 1920s in Berlin.

My mother didn't work for some time after finishing the gymnasium. She went to Riga from Perm. In Riga she entered the university, but she didn't study there long. Shortly afterward she met my father. They got married and moved to Berlin. I don't know whether my father managed to take a part of his capital to Berlin, or whether my parents went there having nothing. One thing I know for sure is that in Berlin my father started his own business. Lithuania was devastated at that time. There were no essential goods or products being produced. Taking advantage of this situation, my father opened a small store in a little town near the German and Lithuanian border. My parents were doing well. At least I know that they managed to help their brothers and sisters. However, my parents, particularly Mama, missed their motherland. Since there was no threat of communist repressions, as Lithuania and Latvia became independent bourgeois countries, my parents moved to Kaunas in Lithuania in 1923. 

Mania, five years younger than my father, lived in Raseiniai. In the 1920s, when my parents' family lived in Berlin, my father's companion Isaac Dinerman, a Jew from St. Petersburg, who was about ten days older than Mania, had become a widower some time before and had to raise his little daughter. My father introduced him to his sister and they got married shortly afterward. A year later their daughter Mary was born. They had a wonderful family and Mania was raising two daughters. When the persecution of Jews in fascist Germany became unbearable, Dinerman managed to move his family to London in 1937. Isaac was a wealthy man. He founded a company in London. Isaac Dinerman died in 1942. Mania inherited his company and became its successful leader.