This is a photograph of my father Haim Ugolev. I don’t know where and by whom it was taken. The date is approximately the 1930s.
My father was born in 1903 in Komarovka. Up to the 4th class he studied at the rural school, and then he finished a seven-year school in Krichev. I guess that he never studied at a Jewish school, because there was no Jewish school in Komarovka. He was a good-tempered person, very honest. It was possible to ask him any question you liked and receive a detailed answer. He was well-informed about historical events; he had many books on history of the 19th century. He had books in English and in Persian languages – he could read English and Persian – but no Jewish ones. My father was a man of average height, he was heavy-browed, had not very thick hair. He was a pleasant man.
My parents were introduced to each other by their parents. My grandfather and grandmother from Komarovka and those from Krichev were acquainted with each other long before the wedding of my parents. When my father arrived in Krichev to continue his studies at the seven-year school, he stayed with an old friend of his father. This old friend was Haim Tsypkin, a tradesman. In the house of the Tsypkins my father met their daughter Pessya. Haim and Pessya fell in love with each other. My parents got married already in Leningrad. They simply went to a civilian registry office and registered their marriage.
My father was a member of the Communist Party. He joined the Party when he arrived in Leningrad. He graduated from a faculty for students-workers and the Oriental College named after Enukidze, Persian department, in 1932. As he was a Jew, they didn’t send him to Persia for work. But he was a highly educated person and they had to place him in a job somewhere. So after he graduated from the College, they sent him to expand the collectivization process. He was an editor of the Machine and Tractor Station newspaper, then of a regional newspaper, and later an editor of municipal newspaper in the city of Krasny-Sulin. This city is rather large; there is a large Metallurgical Industrial Complex. My father made a long business trip: from 1932 till 1936 he worked in Azov and Black Sea territory.
