From right to left: I, my mother Suzrah Potievskaya, nee Feldman, and my brother Leonid Potievskiy. From right to left, standing: my son Igor Shapiro, my daughter Raissa Motylyova, and my brother's daughter Maya. We had this photograph taken in Korosten on the occasion of my brother visiting us from Malin in 1962.
My brother finished the College of Forestry in Malin after the war. It took him some time to get a job – it was the period of state anti-Semitism and Jews were having problems with employment. My brother went to Minsk where he finished Construction College.
Leonid got married in Minsk and they had two children: Maya and Misha. Leonid and his family live in Los Angeles, America, now. My brother gave up Jewish traditions in the army. His family doesn’t observe any Jewish traditions and mine doesn’t either.
My mother was wrong to think that I was marrying a rich man. We lived a modest life in an old house with my husband’s mother. We slept on plain nickel-plated beds. Natan was a very decent man and never allowed himself or others any misuse of authority or property.
He was the breadwinner in the family – I worked only every now and then due to my liver which I had problems with. My husband didn’t want me to work much. So I rarely went to work and stayed at home most of the time taking care of my family.
Our children studied well at school. After finishing school Raissa tried to enter the medical institute, but she didn’t pass the exams successfully enough to get a sufficient number for admittance. It wasn’t a surprise for us – the medical institute was a very popular educational establishment and for a Jew it was next to impossible to enter it. Raissa finished a medical school and became a very good medical nurse.
