Frida Palanker’s father Nusim Veprinsky

My father Nusim Veprinsky, born in 1895. 

My father Nusim (Naum) Veprinsky was born in Korostyshev, Zhytomir region, in 1895. 

In 1915 my father came to Kiev to learn a profession. He became a tailor's apprentice and then developed into a real good tailor for women's gowns. He worked as a cutter at the garment factory before the war. My father was a born tailor. Then my father's brother Yasha came to Kiev and my father taught him the profession of a tailor. Uncle Yasha lived nearby and often visited us. He was a very religious man. 

My father wasn't recruited to the army. At the beginning of the war only young men and professional military were summoned to the front and my father was 46 by the beginning of the war. He was left in reserve as well as other men between 40 and 50 years old. The reservists didn't have a right to leave Kiev. They were supposed to wait for either recruitment to the front or an order summoning them to the labor front. So my father stayed and my mother, my sisters, my brother and I evacuated on 25 July 1941. We didn't hear from our father. We had no information about him until 1945, and we understood that he wasn't among the living any longer, because if he had been alive, he would have let us know. When I was in the evacuation I was continuously trying to find out any information about my father, sending requests to the military recruitment office. Their response to me was that his name was not on the lists of the deceased.  That was all information I had about him.

After I returned to Kiev in 1945 my neighbors told me what happened to my father. Some time before the war a German man moved into our house. He was a very polite and decent person. He changed when Germans entered Kiev. He walked as if he were too important to notice anybody or anything around. He gave away all Jews, including my father. My neighbors were afraid to hide my father. It was dangerous for them and their children. On 29 September few policemen came for my father. They took him to the Babiy Yar and shot him.