David Wainshelboim’s family

This is my family. This photo was taken before my aunt Hona's departure to Palestine. Upper row (standing) from left to right: my mother, Nena Wainshelboim, holding me, Aunt Hona, the 4th on the left is my father's older brother Gershko, the 5th man wearing glasses is Aunt Fania's husband - Weinstein. Sitting from left to right: the first on the left is my father, Moisey Wainshelboim, next to him Grandfather Mehl Wainshelboim and Grandmother Bobtsia, my father's sister Basia Bobis and her husband Matus holding their daughter Minna, who perished with Basia in the ghetto in Kishinev. Sitting on the floor, from left to right, are the children: my sister Rahil, Uncle Genia - my father’s youngest brother, Fania's daughter Lilia and Yakov, Fania’s son, wearing his school uniform. I don't remember the one on the left at the bottom. This photo was taken in Kishinev in the early 1930s. My grandmother Bobtsia kept this photo during the Great Patriotic War and gave it to me.

My grandfather may have finished a commercial school. He was an educated man. He worked as an accountant in a private company during the tsarist regime before 1918 and during the Romanian regimes after World War I. Grandmother Bobtsia – I don’t know her maiden name – came from a rabbi’s family. She was a housewife, which was common among Jewish women. My grandmother and grandfather rented a small apartment consisting of two rooms and a kitchen. My grandfather was religious. He died in 1934, and Zirelson recited a prayer at his funeral. Grandmother Bobtsia lived through the war, evacuation, returned to Kishinev and died in the 1950s.

My grandfather was an educated man and wanted to give his children a good education. My father was the oldest, and the next one was Gershko, born around 1900. After finishing a gymnasium he went to Italy where he finished the Medical Faculty, unfortunately, I don’t know in which town he studied or which college he graduated from. When he returned to Bessarabia, he became a doctor and worked in a small town. Gershko was married. His wife Riva was my mother’s sister.
Fania married Weinstein, a Zionist activist. Basia was married to Matus Bobis, a Jewish man. He was also involved in Zionist activities. During the Soviet period he worked as a proofreader with a newspaper.

My father’s brother Genia worked with my father in the Jewish medical organization. He did some technical job. Genia married Sarrah, a Jewish girl, shortly before the Great Patriotic War.

Hona, born in 1910, was the youngest in the family. Influenced by the Zionist idea of the establishment of a Jewish state, Hona quit Iasi University, where she studied at the Medical Faculty, and moved to Palestine in 1929. I remember her farewell party at my grandfather’s home, when the whole family got together to say ‘good bye’ to Hona. In Palestine she married Rabinovich, a Jewish man.

My father, Moisey Wainshelboim, was born in 1895. He graduated from the Medical Faculty of Iasi University in 1924. Around this time he met my mother and they got married.