Ivan Barbul and his wife Liana Degtiar

This is me and my wife Liana Degtiar. This photo was taken in Kishinev in 1987. We were photographed at a birthday party of one of our friends. When I was director of the school, I was offered a job at the District Party Committee, but Liana believed that I should stick to science. She insisted that I entered a postgraduate course. I enrolled in the postgraduate course of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences in Moscow and lived in a hostel at the Pluschikha in the early 1960s. There were postgraduate students from all over the USSR and we had a full international student body: from Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and I was a Jew from Moldova. Our scientific tutors and employees of the Institute of Mathematics teaching techniques were highly qualified specialists. They got along well both with postgraduate students and lecturers. I went to study in the State Library of the USSR named after Lenin. Highly skilled bibliographers helped me to find the books I needed or ordered them from other places, if necessary. If the book was a rarity, they sent a copy of it. I also studied at the library of the Ushinskiy Academy of Pedagogical Sciences. There were also scientific consultants working in the library to provide assistance to postgraduate students on various subjects. I consulted a specialist in mathematics teaching techniques in Polish schools. I'm still very grateful to many of the specialists for their great support. Liana was the supervisor of her laboratory in the institute and was working on her candidate's dissertation. In January 1969 she achieved a degree in technical sciences. In December this same year, our second son Boris was born. In 1992 my sister Anyuta invited me and my wife to Israel. Anyuta bought us tickets. We took a plane to go there. My sister and her family met us at the airport of Tel Aviv. You can imagine this meeting! It was the reunion of our big family: my nephews Noah, Judah and Zvi, their wives, their wives' parents, many children and grandchildren. I couldn't even count them all.