Gisya Rubinchik's cousin Lev Shur

This is my cousin, Lev Shur, my aunt Haya's son, photographed when he was a cadet at the Leningrad Military Engineering College. The picture was taken right before the war in 1941. Lev perished at the age of 22 on the front at the border of Latvia during the first days of the war. Aunt Haya was my father's third sister. When her husband, Vladimir Shur, was still alive, their family lived in the neighboring settlement Kopys on the Dnieper river. Lev was their older son. Their second son, Zyama, fell from a swing and struck his head against a stone. I was still small, when he died. Their third child, Mishenka, was born in Shklov, where Aunt Haya moved to get help from her mother, my grandmother Sore-Riva. Right then Haya's husband, Vladimir, committed suicide. As it became clear later, the reason for this act was nonsense, or better, his kindness. Someone had borrowed 90 rubles of community money from him and hadn't paid back the debt. Vladimir was supposed to report it. He felt such remorse, as if he had embezzled the money, and hung himself. It was such a horror, I remember, when it happened. Haya fell ill after this news, bleeding from her throat. The children and she had found shelter in our house, although it was already rather crowded, because other people lived in the second half. We studied together in one class at school with Lev.