Beila Rabinovich and her friend

My wife Beila Rabinovich is from the left, and her friend is on the right. I don't know her name or her story. This photo was taken in Bershad in 1933  at the end of an academic year.

In 1946 I went to work as an assistant doctor in villages and later I got a job at the surgery room in the polyclinic in Bershad where I met my future wife. Beila Rabinovich was a little older than me. She was born in Bershad in 1918. Her father Naum Rabinovich owned a butcher's store. After 1917 he worked in a store. After finishing school Beila worked as an accountant. At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War their family evacuated to Tashkent where Naum, the head of the family, died.  Beila, her sister Yeva and their mother Esther Rabinovich returned to Bershad after the war.  Beila's older brother Israel perished at the front. I liked Beila a lot. We saw each other for a while and got married in 1947. My fiancee and I were Komsomol members, but Jewish traditions were more important for us. We had a ceremony in the chuppah at the synagogue in Bershad, though nobody, but our families knew about this event. We had a traditional wedding party with klezmer musicians playing the whole night in Beila's home. I moved to Beila's home where we had a small room for ourselves. There were three rooms in their house: one was of my mother-in-law, and Yeva's family lived in another. In 1948 Beila gave birth to a girl, but the baby died few days later. My wife could have no more children. Beila and I had a good life together. We received a room from my work. 

We didn't observe traditions in my family, though we always celebrated Pesach and had matzah, but I did not go the synagogue. We celebrated all Soviet holidays and went to parades with our colleagues and friends. In the evening my friends got together at our home, my wife cooked dinner, we sat at the table telling stories, laughing, then danced, sang our favorite Soviet songs and had lots of fun.  We were not that wealthy, but we managed to buy new furniture, a washing machine, a fridge and everything we needed on installments. The military registry office arranged for me to go to military recreation homes 6 times, as an invalid of the war. My wife and I went to the sea several times. Basically, our life was no different from the others.