This is the family of my father, Abram Fridman. The photo was taken in Minsk in the 1910s. In the front row on the left is my granny, Sarra Fridman and on the right is my grandpa, Shimon Fridman. In the second row standing from left to right is my father’s elder sister Tsilya, with whom I lived in Leningrad when I became an orphan, my father Abram Fridman, his younger sister Fanya, his brother Grisha and his oldest sister Sonya.

I didn’t really know my granny as I was too small when she died in 1933. They lived in Leningrad and we in Minsk. When we visited Leningrad with my father on his business trips, I met my grandpa and I remember him very well. I recall us arriving in the morning, because the train from Minsk used to arrive in Leningrad in the morning, and I remember him praying.

He was always sitting with his face turned to the East, wearing his tallit. Grandpa didn’t teach me to pray at that time, I was quite small.

Grandfather Shimon was the owner of a dye-house in Minsk before the revolution of 1917. He often traveled on business to Poland and Germany. The family was considered to be one of the most well-to-do families in the city. All of grandpa’s property was nationalized after the revolution of 1917, and he escaped with part of the family to Petrograd. Grandpa died in 1936.