This picture was taken when my grandmother's sister Sophia came to visit her. They both lived in Vinnitsa at that time.
It was approximately in the 1960s.
Grandmother is wearing a head scarf, that's exactly what she usually looked like and dressed.
My grandmother, Lyubov Rafailovna Gutkina, nee Zakhterova [1885-1967], had long thick hair, and she always had a beautiful hair-do. She began to wear head scarves in her elderly age. She put them on in a Russian manner and tied them under her chin.
She came from a prosperous family. Almost all her relatives had left for America. She fell in love with grandfather and wasn’t able to leave for America, since she stayed with her husband. She got married, first a son was born and then my mother. All in all she had five daughters; her son died.
She fed the tailors who worked at her husband’s tailor workshops, because they worked long hours and had no time to go out to eat. She cooked lunch for them. From that time the following joke survived:
Those Jews, who worked at the cooperative, were always very hungry. When my grandmother gave them lunch, she had to bring bread, then the first course and then the second course. Once she brought some bread and went to get the first course.
When she returned she saw that there wasn’t a bread crumb left on the table.
So she went to get some more bread. She brought more bread and left again to bring the first course. When she returned, there was not a single piece of bread ... and then her little daughter began to pull her skirt, and my grandmother, strung-up with the situation, told her, ‘Stop that or I'll put you on the table.’
In 1918 grandfather died of typhus. Grandmother was left with four or five children in Odessa without any livelihood. The Civil War [1918-1921] was at its height. My mother was 13 years old. Grandmother had a sister in Vinnitsa.
They exchanged letters and she moved to Vinnitsa with the children. Her sister was called Sonya and her husband's last name was Ulman.
When grandmother came to Vinnitsa, she lived at her uncle's place with the children for some time, but soon realized that she had to live on her own.
They lived poorly and had to work. Later their condition improved but it was very difficult in the beginning.
Grandmother believed in God, but when the collectivization started and non-ferrous metals were collected from the citizens, grandmother handed in her copper candlestick for Chanukkah, and her menorah.
My grandmother died during a wedding. She was lost in contemplation over something, when the musicians suddendly started to play flourish to some guest.
She had a stroke and died. She was 82 years old.
