This is a picture of my mother Dora Burda (nee Magner) and my father Semyon Burda. The photo was taken before their wedding in Odessa in 1919. My mother was born in 1900. Her Jewish name was Dvoira. There were five children in the family. My mother didn't get any education. She was the older daughter and therefore had to help her mother about the house and with raising the younger children. Her father believed that education was of no use to girls. They had to learn how to be good housewives. My mother was illiterate. After the Revolution of 1917 she finished a likbez. My mother never told me whether they were raised religious. My father was religious and knew all prayers by heart. I don't know if he studied at cheder. When he turned 10 he became an apprentice to a tailor. Later he worked as a tailor. My parents lived in neighboring houses and had known each other since their childhood. They got married in 1920. My father was religious. My parents had a traditional Jewish wedding with a chuppah. A rabbi conducted the wedding ceremony. My mother didn't tell me any details about their wedding. After the wedding my parents lived in my mother's room. My father worked as a tailor and my mother was a housewife. Our family rented an apartment in a three-storied house in the center of Odessa. The owner of the house leased apartments before the Revolution of 1917. There were four big apartments on each floor. After the Revolution the house became the property of the state and the big apartments were turned into communal apartments with a large number of tenants. The entrance door of each apartment led into a long hallway with about 20 doors to rooms. My mother's brothers and sisters lived separately from their parents at the time. My grandparents lived in one room and my mother and our family lived in another room. There were no comforts in this house. We fetched water from the pump in the yard. The toilet was in the next yard and there were always people standing in line there. There were many small tables in the kitchen with a primus stove on each table. The room was heated with a Russian stove. Wood was bought at the market. There was a long shed with many doors in the yard. Each family had a shed where they stored wood.
