My mother Ruchlia Gurievskaya. This photo was taken after her graduate exams, as signed on the back of the photo, in grammar school in Odessa in 1917.
My mother Ruchlia, she was called Rachil at home - a Jewish name sounding alike - was born in 1900. This was her actual date of birth, even though in her passport the date of birth was 1902. When my mother was to enter grammar school in Odessa she was overage and her parents subtracted two years to make her admission possible. My mother was the only one in her family to finish a grammar school. After finishing school she returned home to Zhabokrich .
My mother was the oldest child in her family. Her younger sisters Sonia and Ghenia only studied in primary school for a few years. They were workers at a wool factory in Odessa. Sonia, born in 1907, married Efim Balin, a Jewish man. He was production engineer at the wool fabric factory in Odessa. Efim perished in Odessa on the first days of the Great Patriotic War and Sonia refused to evacuate after he died. She and her two children: Yura, born in 1938, and a week's old baby boy perished in the first days of evacuation in Odessa. Sonia's younger sister Ghenia also perished because Sonia refused to evacuate. Ghenia's husband Michael whose last name I don't remember was at the front during the war. When he returned to Odessa he got to know that his wife and their two children Alexandr and Emma had perished. My mother's younger brother's (Grigori) wife also perished in Odessa. Grigori, born in 1915, perished at the front. His young wife that gave premature birth to a baby on 22 June 1941 caused by the stress also perished with her baby and her old father.
As for my maternal grandmother Frieda, born in early 1880s, I didn't know her. All I know is that she died at childbirth at the age of 33. I knew my grandfather Nuta Grievski very well. He was born in Zhabokrich in middle 1870s. Of my grandfather's relatives I can dimly remember his brother Leiba who was a carpenter. Nuta worked in an agricultural cooperative like my father. I don't know exactly how he earned his living before the revolution of 1917, but I think that he made his living as a carpenter. His family lived in a big wooden house that Nuta built himself. I don't think they were poor.
