Abram Karmazin’s wife's mother Mutsa Men and her daughters Manya and Lilia

Mutsa Men (my wife's mother) and her daughters Manya and Lilia. I met my future right after I returned to Kiev from Briansk in 1937. I worked at the book selling company and a very pretty Jewish girl came there once. We had a small talk and it turned out that she was living with her mother that was very ill and two younger sisters. I spoke to our director and he employed her as an accountant. We kept meeting and got married soon. My wife Maria (Marussia) Men was born in Fastov (a small town near Kiev) in 1907. Her father died from tuberculosis in the early 1920s. Her mother was very beautiful. She died from cancer in the late 1930s. We didn't have a wedding party, because we couldn't afford it. We received our marriage certificate at the registry office and I moved to my wife's poorly furnished two-room apartment in Yaroslavov Val. My wife didn't take my last name. She kept hers to the end of her life. My wife's family wasn't religious and she didn't observe any traditions. That's all I know about her family. She didn't like to talk about it. She always tried to change the subject when asked about her childhood. My wife had two sisters: Riva and Rahil (Lilia). Rahil was born in Fastov in 1912. She finished Russian secondary school and a technical school in Kiev. She was married and had a son. He died when he was a schoolboy. During the war she was in evacuation in Alma-Ata. Her husband was at the front. After the war she returned to Kiev. Her husband died in 1940s. She made her living by giving private classes in mathematics. She died in the middle of 1970s.