Aron Hankin's family

This is a picture of my husband Aron Hankin with his parents, Sophia Hankina, nee Yegudina and Leiba Hankin, and his brother Faiba Hankin. The photo was taken in Kiev in the 1930s. My husband's father was born in Snovsk in 1894. When I saw him for the first time I had the impression that he was a very important man. He looked like a school director. He studied at cheder, but at the time when we met he didn't observe any Jewish traditions, though both of his sons were circumcised. They knew about the Jewish holidays, but had no specific celebrations and didn't cook anything special on holidays. They spoke Russian in the family. Leiba didn't have a professional education. He worked as a packing specialist at the vegetable storage facility in Kiev. He died there in 1971. My husband's mother was born in 1896. I don't know where she was born. She finished a private Jewish grammar school in Snovsk. Teaching was in Russian. She didn't have any professional education. She was a very nice, kind and intelligent woman. I lived with her for a year and came to like her a lot. Fasting at Yom Kippur was the only tradition that she observed. She didn't cover her head. She got married in 1923 and her husband told her that a woman had to do the housekeeping. He didn't allow her to go to work even during the war when they were in evacuation in Ufa. She died in Kiev in 1973. They had two children. Their older son had the Jewish name of Faiba, but he used the Russian name Fedia - for pronunciation reasons, he explained. He studied at school in Kiev and finished it in Ufa. He had a poor sight and wasn't recruited to the army. After the war he graduated from the Kiev Institute of Finance and worked at the bank for many years. He was a member of the Communist party. He died in 1987. He was married and his daughter lives in the US. My husband, Aron Hankin, was born in Kiev in 1927. He studied at a Russian school in Kiev. He finished seven classes before their evacuation to Ufa where he continued his studies at school. They returned to Kiev in 1943. He finished school in Kiev in 1945 and entered the department of philosophy at Kiev University. He graduated in 1949. Beginning in 1948, Jews were not admitted to university. However, he couldn't find a job. He had to work part time in 18-19 schools at a time, because there was one logic and psychology class a week at school. In the early 1950s he entered the department of mathematics at Krivoy Rog Polytechnic Institute and graduated. Later he finished a three-year course in cybernetics. When we met in 1963, he was a teacher of mathematics at school. We got married a year later.