Larisa Radomyselskaya’s father Yefim Lifshytz, stepmother Ghita Lifshytz and their son Marik Lifshytz
This is my father Yefim Lifshytz on the left. In the center is my stepmother Ghita Lifshytz (nee Pinchusovich), on the right is their son Marik Lifshytz, born in 1947. He is 10 years old in this photo. This photo was taken in Kharkov in 1957.
My father finished 10 years of a Russian secondary school and at the age of 18 he was recruited to the army. He served in the Navy. My father told me little about that period. All I know is that they often sailed abroad and my father visited many countries. After the army, in 1925 he was sent to work in Kharkov [a big town in the east of Ukraine in 450 km from Kiev, before 1936 capital of the Ukrainian SSR], to the turbogenerator plant. My father was clever and he quickly grew from an apprentice to a qualified worker, manufacturer of turbine blades.
I do not know a history of acquaintance of my parents, I was too small, when my mum has died and I has not had time to ask her anything. I know only, that my parents got married in 1933 in Kharkov. It was an ordinary wedding of their time: they registered their marriage in a registry office and in the evening they had a small dinner. My father received a room in a communal apartment from his plant and my parents moved in there. I was born on 20 July 1934 in Kharkov. From the time I remember I lived with my grandmother Maria, my mother's mother. My mother was always ill: she had a congenital heart disease. I saw my mother rarely, only when my grandmother took me there visiting.
My mother died in 1940. My father was a member of the Party and a Jewish funeral was out of the question. My mother was cremated and buried in the town cemetery in Kharkov. My father lived alone. He was provably feeling lonely since he asked my grandmother to move in with him and take me with her. My grandmother kept working and my father's sister Sarra came from Siberia to take to my bringing up. She didn't have children and was happy to take care of me. Aunt Sarra worked as a journalist in a small publishing house and she could take her work home and then she could spend much time with me. She taught me to read and write and before going to school I could read in Russian very well. When my aunt was working I used to sit beside her with a book and I could spend hours reading children's books by Russian and Soviet authors. We spoke only Russian in our family. I didn't hear one Jewish word, I didn't know any Jewish traditions and I didn't know who Jews were.
On Sunday 22 June 1941 the Great Patriotic War began. My father has left on front in June 1942. I don't know at which fronts my father was. All I know is his field post number. In late May 1945 my father returned home. The three of us shared one room. My grandmother was very concerned that my father was single. She kept telling him that he needed to get married and that I needed a mother and that he was too young to be living alone. My grandmother introduced my father to her niece, her sister Sonia's daughter Ghita. Ghita was my mother's cousin. Her surname in marriage was Wainshtein. Ghita's husband perished in Sevastopol on the first days of the war. Ghita's son Edward was born in March 1941. Ghita was in evacuation in the Ural and from there she moved to Kharkov. My father and Ghita registered their marriage in a registry office and Ghita and her son came to live with us. In 1947 my father and Ghita's son Mark was born.