This is a picture from my family album. I don’t know the story of this picture, I believe, I took it from grandmother alongside other pictures when I came to visit her.
This is approximately in the 1950s; one of my grandmother's friends took this picture at her place in Vinnitsa.
The picture shows one of her grandsons, Vilya. When he was a student, he played in a famous football team named Lokomotiv. It was well-known across the Soviet Union.
When he was called to serve in the army, they asked him who he was. He said that he played football, so he became a football player in the army team. He never even had to put on his uniform. When he was about to finish his service at the army, people from one of the colleges came and asked who wanted to study in college.
Vilya was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to pass the entrancy exams since he had not been studying for two years, but they said it would be all right. So he studied in that college and got higher education.
Now he lives in Israel. I have many relatives from my father’s side there, but they don’t keep in touch with us.
My grandmother, Lyubov Rafailovna Gutkina, nee Zakhterova [1885-1967], 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.
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.
She 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.
