Maya Kaganskaya and Michael Geller

This is a picture of me and my son Michael Geller, taken during his visit from Israel to Kiev in 2002. My older son, Michael, was a very smart child. He went to school before he turned six and finished it at the age of 15. His teachers advised him to study in Moscow. I went there with him. We submitted our documents to the Mathematics Faculty of Moscow University. There was a competition among those that passed exams. Michael didn't win it. Then we submitted the documents to the Faculty of Automation of Kiev Polytechnic Institute. Michael got a '3' in the main subject. I don't know whether it was anti-Semitism or whether Michael was just too shy at the exams since he was one and a half years younger than other applicants. It was evidently a mistake to submit our documents to the evening Faculty of the Chemical Machine Building Institute because they 'lost' them. That year Michael didn't enter any college. The next year our acquaintances advised us to go to Russia. Michael entered the Faculty of Radio Engineering in Taganrog and simultaneously studied at the Faculty of Mathematics of Rostov University. My younger son, Vitali, also studied at the college in Taganrog. When Michael was a 4th-year student he married Tamara, a Russian girl. I had no objections to their marriage. I respected my son's decision. They came to Kiev after finishing university and Tamara found a job as a radio engineer in a design institute without problems while it took Michael with his 'Item 5' several months before he found a job. Afterwards he worked at a computer center very successfully. He and Tamara lived together for several years before they parted. They had a daughter, Tania, but we are not in touch with her. Michael married Marina, a Jewish girl. She grew up in a family of atheists in Kiev. She finished a Russian school and Polytechnic College. She was an engineer and my son's colleague. Under the influence of his wife he moved to Israel in 1990. They live in Beer Sheva and are very content with their life. His daughter, my granddaughter Irina, born in 1985, serves in the army there. Of course, I would like to go there to see them, but my health condition is poor and the doctors don't allow me a change of climate. My son often calls me and supports me, but he is so busy that he cannot travel here often.