Malka Voloshyna and David Voloshyn with an acquaintance

This is a photo of my parents taken during their stay in a health center in Uzhgorod. On the right is my mother Malka Voloshyna, nee Alshtein, in the center is my father David Voloshyn. On my father's left is their acquaintance. This photo was taken in 1960. My parents went on vacation to Uzhgorod for a few weeks every year to improve their health.

During WWII my parents and sister and her son were in evacuation in Bashkiria. They had a hard life especially in winter. They lived in a house and needed wood for heating it. A military registry committee provided sledges, a horse, a saw and an ax to people in evacuation, but they had to go cut trees and saw them in the woods by themselves. Of course, it was too much for women to handle, but they survived somehow. My parents and my sister and her son returned to Kiev in early 1946. My parents' apartment was vacant and they had no problems with where to live. My mother's sisters and their families also returned to Kiev.

After they returned to Kiev my parents didn't observe Jewish traditions. At least, that's what I thought. I didn't visit them often.

Up to the end of their life they did not work, I always helped them. My mother died in 1968 and my father died two months later. We buried them in the Jewish section of the town cemetery. There were no Jewish rituals observed at their funeral.