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My aunt Rosa (Reizl) Lieberzon (nee Ozer) and her grandsons Lyonia and Boris Zinger photographed in Tiraspol in 1955. They mailed to us in Berdichev photos to see how the children grew up.
My mother Hava Ozer came from a Jewish family in Berdichev. Her parents died of enteric fever in 1914 when my mother was 6 [she was born in 1908]. There were no relatives willing to adopt five children and they were all sent to a children's home.
My mother's oldest sister Reizl (aunt Rosa), born in 1898, married Misha Lieberson, a Jewish man, a shoemaker through a matchmaker. He happened to be an alcoholic - 'Aidish shyker' - Yiddish for 'alcoholic' - such a disgrace for a Jewish family! They lived in Odessa. Reizl brought her children to Berdichev in summer: she had two boys - Lyova and Grisha and a girl - Maria. The boys went to the army when the Great Patriotic War began and perished at the front. Aunt Reizl and Maria evacuated. I don't know what happened to her husband. He might have died before the war. After the war the family settled down in Berdichev. Aunt Reizl was a cook at a canteen. My mother helped Maria to enter the Faculty of mathematic at the two-year Pedagogical Institute. Upon graduation she got a job assignment in Chernochiye village near Tiraspol and later she was a teacher of mathematic in Tiraspol. She was a very good teacher and a well-respected person. Maria married David Zinger, a Jewish man in 1950s. He was an invalid of war and worked at the factory in Tiraspol that manufactured wine boxes. Aunt Reizl lived with Maria. She died in 1983. Maria and her family live in Israel now. They left after my aunt died in 1987. We correspond with her. When they went to Israel in the early 1980s David fell ill and the government in the country gave them a room in a special building for older people. There are good conditions there to have a good life, but they, unfortunately, have weak health.
