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This is my mother Raissa Shtein and my father's cousin Anna Savranskaya (I have no information about her). Photograph made in Zvenigorodka in 1926.
There lived many Jewish people in Zenigorodka. My parents had many friends that were visiting them. I remember the Rosental family - Manya and Israel. There was also the Kirzner family. They had 3 children. Kirzner was a specialist in manufacture of cereals and flour. There was lawyer Matt, a very highly respected man. Tese families were not religious, but they celebrated all Jewish holidays. It was a tradition with us. We visited one another, and had tea parties, made strudels with jam and nuts and cookies. There was no synagogue, but the people celebrated holidays together. The Jews communicated in Ukrainian, using Yiddish words every now and then. They danced waltz, tango, Cracovienne, polka and freilehs. My brother Yakov was playing the piano and my mother dancing with her shoes off.
In 1937 my mother's brother Efim was arrested.
My mother started visiting this sadly known office in 15, Korolenko street in Kiev (NKVD office). She took her baby and kept going to that office trying to find out where her brother was. They didn't allow her to leave parcels for him but they didn't tell her where he was either. At that time Vyshynskiy was the all-Union Prosecutor. My mother wrote so many letters that one of them reached the Chief Office in Moscow. At the beginning of 1939 a representative of this Office came on a visit to our home.
