These are my parents, Yakov Plotkin and Esphir Ulman in the summer of 1957 during their vacation at the summer cottage in Smolyachkovo village in Leningrad region. They had a summer cottage and lived there from May to October every year.
My mother, Esphir, was born in Serebryanka village, Luga district, Petersburg province in 1901. She studied at the Pedagogical Institute named after Hertzen. During her life she worked as a kindergarten teacher, as a head of department at the National Education District Department (RONO), Municipal National Education Department (ONO) inspector, and an adviser for the Executive Committee chairman.
She defended her final thesis when she was pregnant with me. She married Yakov Aronovich Plotkin and continued to live with her parents. I don't know how and when they met. I only know that their marriage wasn't registered. They rented a room for some time not far from grandparents' place, but by the time I was born they returned to my grandparents'. My parents only registered their marriage in the 1950s.
My father was born in 1899 in the small town of Rogachev, Belarus. He graduated from the Chemical Pharmaceutical Institute and served in the Red Army as of 1918.
When the Great Patriotic War broke out in 1941, he signed up for the People's Volunteer Corps, but he was brought back to the plant, because he had been wounded on his ear during the Civil War. He had an operation and his hearing became bad afterwards.
