This is my sister Regina Fryde, nee Friedman. The photo was taken in Kovel in 1932.
There were three children in our family: Regina, Rywka, and I. I was born in 1913. Regina was two years older than I, and Rywka was ten years younger. Rywka was a fantastically gifted girl and I had a friendlier relationship with her than with my elder sister, with whom I had frequent quarrels. Regina worked as a typist in the Jewish Community in Kovel.
While I attended the Hebrew gymnasium, my sister Regina went to the Jewish-Polish gymnasium and became fluent in Russian. She graduated with a high-school diploma but didn't go on to university because in those years we couldn't afford the costs that would have entailed. I remember that Regina's boyfriends and girlfriends met in our apartment and they spoke Russian. I was familiar with the sound of Russian but couldn't speak it. Later Regina had contacts with Poles, and we learned Polish very quickly.
Regina married a 'byezhenets', a laryngologist from Warsaw, his name was Fryde. She was pregnant, about to give birth. My younger sister was in hiding outside the ghetto; she was at a very good place, somewhere with a Polish family in Kovel. But when she heard that the Germans had surrounded the ghetto and taken away everyone to be shot, she left her hiding place and went to join her mother and sister. Mom and both my sisters were killed.
