Rosa Gershenovich with her friend Polia Finegersh

My friend Polia Finegersh (on the left) and me on a photo taken in Tiraspol in 1939, after my arrival in that city. In Rybnitsa we lived in the embankment street where the wealthier families lived: store owners, doctors, etc. Poorer people, shoemakers, tailors, workers, etc., lived farther out. All my friends were Jews. In 1922 I started going to the Russian lower secondary school, which I attended for seven years. The majority of the children at the school were Jewish. I mastered my Russian at this school. There were Russian and Moldavian children, but we Jews stood separately. We stayed together - not on purpose, it just happened to be so. We communicated and played with the other children, but were not close friends with them. Polia became an accountant after finishing school. When my mother moved to Moscow in 1938, I stayed in Rybnitsa and in 1939 moved to Tiraspol, the capital of the Moldavian Republic. Tiraspol was a big and beautiful town compared to Rybnitsa. My friend Polia lived there with her husband and I stayed with them. I got a job as a cashier and then as an accountant in the Central Bank. There were many Jews in Tiraspol. Only the chief accountant at my workplace was Russian; all the other employees were Jewish. I rented a room from a Jewish family, the Roizmans. Polia and her mother perished in Tiraspol in 1941.