In this photo there is my mother Mirl Miller (in the center) with her friends photographed just for the memory in a photo studio in Yelisavetgrad in 1915. My grandmother Etah kept this photo and gave it to me, when I was leaving Sagaydak to continue my studies. This photograph is the only memory of my mother that I have.
My mother Mirl Miller was born in Ingulets in 1898. I don't know anything about her childhood. She got a Jewish education at home, finished two or three forms of a Jewish elementary school and could write and read in the Jewish language. Before she got married she was helping her father with farming and about the house. From what my uncle Zalman says, my grandmother and grandfather were very religious. They observed all Jewish traditions and celebrated holidays. I don't know how my mother met my father. Probably they met through matchmakers that was customary with Jewish families. She got married in early 1916.
My parents had a traditional wedding under a chuppah at the synagogue, my father was recruited to the army during WWI. My mother was pregnant with me. I was born on the 2nd day of Chanukkah in December 1916. My mother had mastitis that resulted in blood poisoning. She died in winter 1917 when I was one and a half months old. My grandmother Etah was looking after my mother, when she was ill. When my mother was dying, she took grandmother Etah's hand and asked her to name me Yelizaveta after her mother. Besides, my mother made grandmother Etah promise that she would never allow me to be raised by a stepmother. My mother said that my father would get married. He was young and handsome, she said, and asked my grandmother to raise me in her house. Grandmother Etah became my mother from then on, and I called her 'Mama' till the last days of her life.
