My daughters: Galina on the right and Natalia Matveyuk on the left. This photo was taken on Natalia's birthday in Kherson in 1972.
My husband, my girls and I spent vacations on resorts in the Crimea and Caucasus and traveled to Moscow, Kiev and Leningrad. In bigger towns we liked going to theaters, exhibitions and concerts. We had a mixed marriage and never celebrated Jewish or Christian holidays. We raised our children to be internationalists. My daughters decided to choose their father's nationality. They are Ukrainian. After finishing school Galina studied in a vocational school for a year and became a specialist in optics. She met Anatoliy, a handsome Russian man in her school and they got married. They have two children: Anna, born in 1970, and Andrey, born in 1980. Unfortunately, my daughter's family life with her handsome husband failed: he began to drink and abuse Galina and me calling us 'zhydovka' [kike]. When my husband and I heard that he beat Galina we took her and our grandchildren here. Galina was alone for a few years before she married a nice Jewish man whose name was also Anatoliy by coincidence. In the late 1990s they moved to Germany. Anna, my dear granddaughter, died from brain aneurism at the age of 25. Andrey went to study in Israel and stayed to live there.
Natalia, my second daughter, finished the Conservatory in Kharkov. She married her Jewish fellow student Valeriy Gorskiy. Natalia and Valeriy live in Zaporozhiye [350 km from Kiev], where they have jobs. Natalia and Valeriy have two children: Maria, born in 1982, a student of the Theatrical College, and Yuri, who studies in the 8th form. My daughter and grandchildren visit me on summer vacations and stay a few weeks and we also call each other once a week. It is unfortunate that we cannot see each other more frequently.
