Hanna Reznik, Shoil Shoov and Mina Belenkaya

This is a picture of my mother Hanna Reznik, nee Shoov (on the left), her younger brother Shoil Shoov and her sister Mina Belenkaya, nee Shoov. The photo was taken in Gaisin in 1923. Shoil, my mother's younger brother, born in 1915, fell in love with his brother Moisey's daughter Nyusia. Of course, the family was against their marriage for the reason that Shoil was Nyusia's uncle. But the young people insisted on getting married which they did. Their marriage didn't last long - Nyusia died when giving birth to her first baby. It was a boy and they gave him the name of Gennadiy. Shoil never married again. He was raising his son. He worked at the Likhachov Automobile Plant in Moscow. At first he was an apprentice to a mechanic and gradually rose to the post of director of the technical school at this plant. During the Great Patriotic War he was at the front and had medals and orders for his combat deeds. Around 1940, when Jewish people were persecuted [during the so-called Great Terror] he was arrested and sentenced to ten years of imprisonment. He spent seven years in a camp near Karaganda. He returned in 1953 after Stalin died. Shoil was rehabilitated. The authorities returned his party membership card and all his awards. Those years in the camps must have been so horrific that he never told me or his son Gennadiy anything about this period of his life. In the late 1970s Shoil emigrated to America and died there in 1998. I have vivid memories of my mother's sister Mina, born in 1900. Mina lived in Astrakhan. Her husband Isaak Belenkiy was a photographer. Mina had no education and she worked as a cleaning lady, then as a janitor and later as a deactivation assistant. Mina and Isaak had two sons: Leonid and Semyon. They were both recruited to the army in the first days of the war and perished at the very beginning of the war. Mina and Isaak were evacuated to Miass, Cheliabinsk region, during the war. The Moscow plant was evacuated there. Mina died in this town in 1951, Isaak stayed to live in Miass, and died there in the 1960s. They lived in this town with my mother's younger sister Rieva.