Lyudmila's father

My father, Samuil Berkovich Levit was born in Simferopol in 1904. His family, too, was rather well to do, but not as much, as the family of my mother. Here we see father in the courtyard of their own house in Simferopol (they owned a house, in my opinion, in Kanatnaya street), wearing the uniform of a vocational school pupil. On this photo he is, probably, 12-13 years old. That school had a commercial branch. He was studying at that commercial department. But before that, my father, I think, went to a cheder, but I do not know for sure.

Daddy's elder sister Rachel worked in the Crimean Komsomol, was a very loyal Komsomol member, and consequently named my cousin, born in 1922, in honour of Inessa Armand [a prominent Bolshevik figure], and after the death of Lenin renamed her Lenina. The father of Inessa-Lenina was a writer by name Gorev. Before the war, they performed his play "On the banks of Neva" in Alexandrinsky Theatre in Leningrad. He died in the middle of the 1970s, and Aunt - in 1936, of cancer.

Also, Daddy had a sister Fenya, but what her occupation was, I do not know. Her husband Yosya worked at a defense factory, therefore they were evacuated to Sverdlovsk in 1941 and never came back to Leningrad any more.

Father's sister Sonya named her son Rem - the abbreviation for  "revolution, electrification, peace". Sonya also was an ardent Komsomol member, as well as her husband Nikandr (in general we called him Kolya), but actually he was Nikandr Kuzin. Uncle Kolya at that time was the chief of construction of Pre-Baltic Electric Power Station, deputy of the Supreme Council of Estonia, they lived in Narva, and died in Pushkin, when they were retired.

Daddy's younger brother Abram, too, was an active Komsomol member. He was the Komsomol leader of the steel-casting shop in a factory. Then he worked as a deputy director of a large factory in Gatchina. He also died rather young, approximately in 1976.

Until 1941, all Daddy's relatives lived in Leningrad, but the war scattered them over to different places.