Frieda Portnaya and her husband Vladimir Portnoy

This is a photo of my husband ,Vladimir Haimovich Portnoy,and me, Frieda Waldman Portnaya, taken in Kiev in 1948 on our wedding day. I met my husband after the war in Kiev. He was born in Kiev in 1925 and had a sister and two brothers. Yasha Orlov, one of his brothers, died near Oryol and was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. My husband's parents, Haim Portnoy and Sheindl Portnaya, were very religious people. I didn't know his father: he died during the war in the evacuation. His mother Sheindl always attended synagogue and had a seat there. She celebrated all the Jewish holidays. We visited her frequently, and I learned about the Jewish holidays from her. Volodia and I got married in 1948. We didn't have a wedding, our marriage was just registered at the registration office. I made myself a new dress, but we didn't have any rings. My mother baked some pastries and sweets and we invited our neighbors to celebrate our wedding. In 1949 our daughter Tatiana was born. The four of us lived in one 10 square meter room. We were not allotted an apartment. Apparently because of anti-Semitism, my husband couldn't find a job for a long time, even though he was just an assistant shoemaker. So he signed a contract for a job in Sakhalin, in the Far North. I stayed in Kiev alone with our child. It was very difficult to place a child in a kindergarten. I claimed that my husband had abandoned us, so I could get the status of a single mother and my daughter could go to kindergarten. In 1956 our son Efim was born. My husband died in 1996. Toward the end of his life we always celebrated the Jewish holidays.