Dimitri Kamyshan’s aunt Lilia Zilberberg

My father's sister Lilia Zilberberg in 1915.  She wanted to send this photograph to her acquaintance who served in the Russian army. He perished the same year. 

My grandparents had six children. Lilia was their oldest daughter. She was born in Kharkov in 1892. She finished Russian grammar school in Kharkov and she worked as a planning manager at a plant. 

Three of my father's sisters were spinsters, and they loved me. I called them by their first names: Ida, Lilia and Tamara, and I was allowed to do anything I wished. My aunts spoke fluent French. They taught me French and raised me. On certain days I was only allowed to talk French with them. They had rather attractive appearances, by the way, and why they were single - I don't know. They were all different. Only now, after so many years have passed, do I realize how much I loved them. 

Lilia perished at the beginning of September 1941, during the first air raid in Kharkov.