Galina Shkolnikova's mother Sofia Yezerskaya

This is my mother, Sofia Yezerskaya, at the age of 19 in Yekaterinoslav. The following is written on the back of the picture in uncertain handwriting, "The picture was taken at the 1st year at the Medical Faculty.? My mother was born in 1899 in the town of Yekaterinoslav. She finished the private Jewish secular gymnasium in that town and chose the medical walk of life. She entered the Medical Faculty of the Yekaterinoslav University in 1916. The Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War [1918-1921] prevented her from graduating. She graduated from the Kharkov Medical Institute in 1924 and left for Donbass to work as a 'traveling' doctor. She visited various villages on a cart; the hospital coachman led the horse. When my parents met in 1925, my mother worked in a hospital at Pereyezdnaya station. They got married in 1927. They didn't have a religious wedding: my parents' friends, young Komsomol members and some other people were present. My mother didn't change her maiden name after her marriage. It was written as Sofia Yakovlevna Yezerskaya in her passport, so her name and paternal name were already russified, though, in the record-book of 1917 of the Yekaterinoslav University, she wrote her name as Sima Yankelevna.