Kushel Finberg

This is a picture of my husband, Kushel Finberg, when he was about 19. The photo was taken at the factory where he worked in Kiev. On August 3, 1947, when I was 21, I got married. Kushel was our neighbor. My mentality had been Soviet, rather than Jewish, with its two main characteristics: first, atheism; second, internationalism. There was simply no place for Jewish traditions or faith. We all believed in Communism and feared nothing. The war and the Holocaust radically changed my mind. With my marriage, my life began to fill with Jewish traditions and Jewish religion again. Thanks to my mother-in-law, keeping the main rituals and attending synagogue became a normal thing for us.