Evgenia and Grigory Bekker with their friends

This is a picture of my mother Evgenia Bekker, first row on the right, and her older brother Grigory Bekker, second row on the right, and my mother's teacher colleagues. The photo was taken in Rybnitsa in 1946 on the occasion of Grigory and his wife visiting us after the war. In March 1944 the Soviet troops came close to Rybnitsa. There were rumors in the ghetto, that the Germans were going to shoot all inmates in the ghetto before retreating. Zhenia Ryzhkovskaya came to take us to her home from the ghetto. We escaped from the ghetto at night and came to her house. There were battles for several days before the Soviet troops entered Rybnitsa. The people of the ghetto survived. We were overwhelmed with happiness. Inmates of the ghetto and other people hugged and kissed Soviet soldiers. We returned home. I went to the 1st grade at school. My mother worked at school. She was a teacher of the Russian and Ukrainian languages and the director of the school. During the Great Patriotic War Grigory was a military doctor at the front. After demobilization from Soviet Army in 1946, my mother's older brother Grigory and his wife Raissa came to see us. This was our first meeting after many long years of separation. We had lost track of him during the war. Everybody was happy to see them. The adults couldn't stop talking and were happy to have survived this horror and found each other. Afterwards we kept in touch with him until he died. In the last years of his life Grigory had lung problems. Doctors advised him to get a change of climate. He and his wife moved to the town of Reni in the south of Moldova. His children didn't move with him. He died there in the 1960s. His wife and children moved to Israel in the 1970s.