Lubov Ratmanskaya's parents Isay Ratmansky and Sofia Ratmanskaya

My parents: Isay Ratmansky and Sofia Ratmanskaya. The photo was taken after their wedding in Yelets in 1906. My father was born in the 1870s. He went to cheder for a short time. While he lived with his parents, until he came of age, he studied embroidery - he worked on special embroidering machines. There are no such machines any more; they disappeared during the war. My father's teacher was Russian, and my father often stayed at his house. My father was very talented. He embroidered dresses, fabric. There were many Russian embroiderers in Kiev. I remember Fedorov very well. I remember him because when Petliura came to Kiev, he brought his banner to my father to embroider. My father refused. My mother begged him on her knees. It was very dangerous for him to refuse. Then I, a preschooler, was sent to Fedorov, who embroidered that banner and we gave it back to Petliura's soldiers. My mother and father got married through embroidery. Traveling to different cities in search of a job, my father found himself in a workshop where my mother was sewing coats, and my father began to work there as an embroiderer. My mother and father got married in Pogar. It was a small town. My father was involved in some revolutionary group, so he was given a false passport under the name of Pasternak and he was illegally sent to Tsaritsyn. My mother went with him. My elder brother Abram was born in Tsaritsyn in 1908. I don't know any details of my father's revolutionary activities. He never talked about it. But my brother was Jewish, so he was circumcised in secret: father found a rabbi in Tsaritsyn and received a special certificate for Abram. Abram is Jewish, but his skin is very dark. Later, the group that helped my father sent him to Vladikavkaz. It was some time around 1909. At the end of 1917 we came to Kiev, to my father's parents. Later, because my father was an embroiderer and his work was in demand, my parents found a flat. My parents had practically no education. I have some of their letters and I can see that they were not very well educated. But my father knew literature very well. Mother liked to read very much. During military communism we lived in a house in Proreznaya Street and when there were shootings we hid in the basement. There was no light in the basement, and my father would recite works by different writers by heart to all who hid with us. I should add that all the Ratmanskys were very talented; it was a wonderful family, where each member felt the need to learn always more and more.