The Jewish class of the Ukrainian school where Rakhil Givand-Tikhaya's husband Naum Tikhiy-Shtilerman studied.

The Jewish class of the Ukrainian school where my husband Naum Tikhiy-Shtilerman studied. He is sitting on the extreme right in the second row. In the top row in the middle is his elder sister, Dina, who now lives in Israel.

Naum and his sisters attended to a Ukrainian school, but were placed in a Jewish class. It was not a class where Yiddish or Hebrew was the language of instruction, but simply a class into which all the Jewish children from the neighboring villages were collected. Even though Naum's family spoke Yiddish at home, he also spoke fluent Ukrainian and considered the Ukrainian language to be his native.

Naum entered the university before the war at the age of 15. He wanted to study at the philological department. He was a very gifted person. He passed all high school exams early and then passed the entering exams. He was accepted even though his father had been arrested in the Stalinist times. Maybe he was accepted because he entered the Ukrainian department, which was 'out of fashion' at those days - everyone wanted to learn only Russian language and literature.