This photo of my parents, Esther Shulyakovskaya and Gertz Shulyakovsky was taken in 1907 in Slutsk.

My father was born in 1881 in the town of Slutsk. Dad’s mother tongue was Yiddish. He also spoke Russian as well as Hebrew, and later he learnt German on his own; he was a very talented man. Everyone else in our family also spoke Russian. He went to the cheder as a child, as all Jewish kids did. Later he became an accountant and worked in the forestry.

My mother was born in 1888. She grew up in a village and she was used to the work on a farm. She didn’t go to cheder, there weren’t any in that village. She was promised to my father as a wife.

Mom was the eldest daughter in her family. She was married off at the age of 17. Mom never told me about her wedding. I was her fourth kid when she was 24 years old. She was married off because there were seven daughters in the family. Before her marriage she worked as a milkmaid in the Kolkhoz, where she met my father.

My parents got married in 1905. I don’t know what kind of wedding they had. They lived in Slutsk at first. They had four kids: Yefim, Lev, Nina and me, Raisa. During the war mom was from 1941 to -1944 with me in evacuation in Sverdlovsk. After the war she lived with us. She was sick a lot of the time and died in 1952.