Beila Gabis’s aunts Enta Fainshtein and Freida Bershatskaya

This is my father's sisters Enta is on the right, beside her is Freida. This photo was taken before Freida's wedding in Bershad around 1937.

My father’s sister Enta was born in 1905. She fell in love with her cousin brother Aizek who lived in grandmother's house. His parents, my grandmother's sister and her husband, were killed during a Petlura pogrom in Kryzhopol town where they lived. My grandmother took the boy to her home. Aizek severely injured his genitals at the buttery where he was working and couldn't have children. Enta insisted on marrying him, nevertheless. She said she wanted him and as for children, well, they could adopt them. They loved each other dearly. However, they asked my mother to let them raise me, but would a mother give away her child even to someone of her own family. Enta finished a vocational school and became a designer. At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War Aizek was recruited to the army and Enta, my grandmother and Enta's sisters evacuated to Tashkent. Aizek perished at the front. After the war Enta married a widower with eight children. Enta loved them very much and became a mother to them. Her husband died in the late 1950s and Enta raised his children. The children supported her when she became old. Enta died in the middle of the 1970s.

My aunt Freida, a nice pretty girl, was the youngest in the family. She was 8 years older than I and we often played with dolls together. I loved Freida. She was like a sister to me. Freida finished a technological school and was director of a diner at a distillery. She fell in love with Noeh Bershad'ski, a Jewish man much older than she. They had a daughter: Genia. Noeh was recruited to the army at the beginning of the war and he perished at the front. Freida, Enta and grandmother were in evacuation together. After the war she remarried and moved to the Ural. We corresponded before the 1990s, but then our correspondence terminated. This is all information I have about Freida.