Solomon Zeldovich

This is a picture of my paternal grandfather Solomon Zeldovich. The photo was taken in the private studio Ermans in Odessa in 1910. My grandfather was born in Vilno [today Vilnius, Lithuania] in 1860. All I know about my grandfather is what my father told me. My grandfather's parents passed away when he was small and he was raised at the municipal children's home in Vilno. In the late 1860s some childless relatives of his took him to Nikolaev where they lived. They must have been wealthy people since they could afford to give him a good education. My father said that my grandfather finished a grammar school and studied at Novorossiysk University [after 1919 Odessa University]. My grandfather supplied timber to the shipbuilding yard in Nikolaev. He owned a big storage facility and five residential buildings in the center of Nikolaev where he also leased apartments. My grandfather's family lived in one of these houses near the timber storage facility. They were religious. They followed the kashrut and my grandfather went to the synagogue on holidays. He had a beard and moustache and wore clothing typical for merchants. My father told me that there were Jewish self-defense units during the 1905 pogroms in some streets in Nikolaev and those neighborhoods didn't suffer that much. In my grandfather's neighborhood there was also a self-defense unit and their Russian neighbors also helped them. My grandfather's property didn't suffer from pogroms. My grandfather died of a heart attack in Nikolaev in 1915 at the age of 55. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Nikolaev.