This is my brother Boruch-Nathan Volok. This photo was taken in Bolgrad in 1924. This is the last photograph of my brother.
My second brother, Boruch-Nathan, was born in Cimislia in 1905, I don’t remember him very well. When I was about five years old, my 19-year-old brother drowned in the river. I can still remember this horrible day in all details. It was Thursday, and on Thursday there was a brass orchestra playing on the boulevard where we lived. People went for a walk on the boulevard. Before going out I cried, asking Mama to let me wear a new marquisette dress, but my mother said that since there was no holiday there was no reason for me to wear the dress. I ran out and my tears dried out, when I heard the music. All of a sudden a bunch of boys surrounded me. They were shouting, ‘Your brother has drowned! Your brother has drowned!’ I didn’t understand what they meant and ran home. Mama was sitting in the yard having tea, holding a lump of sugar in her mouth. She asked me, ‘What’s up?’ and I replied, ‘The boys say that Boruch-Nathan had drowned.’
There were two exits from our yard: one to the boulevard and the other one to Magazinnaya Street leading to the river. When I said this, there was a roar of voices from the side of the river: ‘Uh-uh…’ that I could never forget. Mama fainted… Then my sister Tania’s friend Esther took me to her place. I remember sitting on a windowsill in her house, crying. The dogs were barking. When my older brother living in Palestine heard that our brother had drowned, he changed his surname to Achinathan. ‘Achi’ is ‘my brother’ in Hebrew. Achinathan means ‘my brother Nathan.’ His name became Aviezer Achinathan.
