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This is my mother Dora Rozenberg and my grandmother Tsylia Rahman. This photo was taken in Vinnitsa in 1914.
My maternal grandmother Tsylia Rahman, whose maiden name I don't know, was born in a town near Chernovtsy in 1875. She graduated from a private Russian grammar school. My grandmother was a beautiful girl and dressed with good taste. She was married very young to a man she didn't love. She divorced him shortly afterwards and never wanted to talk about him. She then married Isaac Rahman for love. I don't know where she and my grandfather met. The newlyweds settled down in the town of Konstantinovka in the Poltava province where my mother and her brother were born. Then they lived in Yelisavetgrad.
I knew my grandmother very well. She was the one who raised me, since my mother and father were at work from morning until night. She took me for walks in the park and to my music classes. My grandmother told me stories. When I grew up, I recognized the biblical themes in them. My grandmother was a housewife. She was a great cook; I remember she often made Jewish cookies, kichelah and gefilte fish. My grandmother was also good at sewing. She made me lovely suits and dresses. My grandmother was well-read too: she knew Yiddish and read Jewish books. Her favorite writers were Sholem Aleichem and Bialik. Grandmother Tsylia was not religious: she didn't go to the synagogue, but she knew all the Jewish traditions and fasted on Yom Kippur.
My mother Dora Rahman was born in 1897 in Konstantinovka town of Poltava province. She graduated from a private grammar school for girls in Yelisavetgrad. Shortly before the October revolution her family moved to Odessa. There she was a member of the underground association of young Bolsheviks of Odessa for some time, as a result of her and her brother's common enthusiasm for revolutionary ideas. In 1922, my mother entered Odessa Medical College and after graduating, she received a diploma in psychiatry.
