Moisey Goihberg's maternal grandfather, Gersh Voloshyn,
with his nephew, Itshak Liber and niece, Mura Balaban

This photo shows my grandfather Gersh Voloshyn (seated in the center) with his nephew, Itshak Liber, and niece, Mura Balaban, the children of grandfather's sisters, Esphir Liber and Hana Balaban. This photo was taken on the occasion of Itshak and Mura's visit in Yaruga around 1916. My grandfather Gersh Voloshyn was a vine grower. I don't think the wine his vineyard produced was kosher wine. He sold it to Jewish and non-Jewish customers. He owned 2 hectares of vineyard, which enabled him to have a comfortable life. His sons helped him with the work at the vineyard. They all worked very hard, but my grandfather was a very cheerful and merry man and there was always a lot of laughter in my grandparents' house. My grandfather's wife, Blima, was a housewife. They had four children: my mother's older brothers Moisey and Osher, my mother Lisa, and her younger sister Rachel. Their family wasn't very religious. They went to synagogue and celebrated all the Jewish holidays, mainly in tribute to tradition. They spoke Yiddish at home, but they were fluent in Russian and Ukrainian. My parents also spoke Yiddish to one another, but they spoke Russian to me. During one of the pogroms that often happened in Yaruga in the 1920s my grandfather's family was hiding in the vineyard adjacent to the forest. It was a late, cold and rainy autumn. My grandfather caught a cold that resulted in the exacerbation of his tuberculosis. My grandfather died around 1921. Aunt Mura and her husband Itshak Liber lived in Kiev. Mura was a dentist at the Communications College and Itshak was a violinist. Their son Vitia was a very talented young man. He knew several foreign languages and studied at the Kiev Institute of Motion Picture Engineers. We were friends and I often visited their hospitable family. When the war broke out, Vitia went to the front and perished during the defense of Kiev in the first months the war.