Victor Feldman

This is me as a one-year old. A medical nurse is holding me and my mother is sitting on the right looking at me. This photo was taken in the hospital of the Jewish community in Odessa in 1916. In 1915 my mother graduated from the Emperor's University in Novorossiysk [Odessa University from 1919]. An interesting fact is that there were two marks, 'satisfactory' and 'unsatisfactory', at her time. They had no internship. Upon graduation they received a doctor's diploma. Women who got higher education didn't change their last name and so my mother had a double name after she got married: Dr. Ghendler-Feldman. My mother went to work at a military hospital that the Jewish community opened during World War I. She received an apartment in the same house where the hospital was. This house belonged to the Jewish burial brotherhood [Chevra Kaddisha], one of the first public organizations in Odessa. They took the responsibility for a burial of the poor at no or minimal cost. They had a Jewish cemetery in their custody. I was born on 29th October 1915. I was an only child. I was named Victor since my parents didn't want to give me a Jewish name. My mother finished a grammar school and knew Latin. Victor means winner in Latin.