These are my nearest relatives on Mother's side: my grandfather Movsha Yankelevich Zheleznyak (first from the right),
grandmother Rachel Shmoilovna Zheleznyak (first from the left) and my mother Esphir.
On this photo of 1914 Grandfather is 29, Grandmother - 25, Esphir - 4 years old.
My mother's father, Movsha Yankelevich Zheleznyak was born in Vitebsk in 1885.
After 1942 up until his death he celebrated his birthday on May 20, because that's when the Partisans rescued him.
Grandfather Movsha earned good money and worked as a house painter.
My grandmother, Rakhil Shmuilovna Zheleznyak was born in Vitebsk in 1889. She did not receive any kind of education.
She was calm, nice, easily forgiving, and agreeable with anything that grandfather suggested.
Grandmother died in 1963 in Riga, where she went to visit her youngest daughter the doctor, Rebecca.
My mother - Esphir Movshevna Babitskaya (maiden name- Zheleznyak) was born in Vitebsk in 1910.
After the completion of high school she was accepted into the Vitebsk Veterinary Institute, which she graduated from, as father did, in 1931.
That is where they met and married. Mother gave birth to two children: me in 1931 and my brother Edward in 1935
and in the course of a few years she worked in her field in Veliky Luki and Mogilev, where father served.
