This photograph was taken by my father, Abram Fridman, in Minsk in 1932 the day I turned three years old. The doll you see in my arms was brought for me from Leningrad by my paternal grandpa, Shimon Fridman.

I was born in 1929 in Minsk, my brother Georgy was born in 1932. We lived in a two-room luxury flat. I remember going to a private kindergarten, where there was the so-called frebelichka, a governess called after Friedrich Froebel, the founder of the first kindergarten, who went for a walk with us and played various games in German. Her name was Margarita Robertovna. We spent a lot of time doing needlework. I was taught to embroider and to knit by the housemaid. I embroidered excellently, knitted excellently, and I can still do all these things now. Unfortunately we didn’t observe Rosh Hashanah or Sabbath. I don’t remember going to the synagogue. Only after the war did I learn where it was situated.

Minsk was a semi-provincial, semi-European city. Belarus was within the Jewish pale of settlement (the area where Jews were allowed to settle, excepting the rural areas) up to 1917 when Jews were not permitted to live where they liked. So there were a lot of Jews in Minsk. For example, according to my recollections and people’s stories, before the war the total population of Minsk was 250,000, out of which 80,000–100,000 Jews were later confined to the Minsk ghetto – in spite of the fact that some Jews were able to leave the city before the war.