Evgenia Ershova's grandmother Genia Trahtenberg, her mother Sonia Gutianskaya and her mother's sister Hontsia Trahtenberg

In this photo taken in Sobolevka in 1918, my grandmother Genia Trahtenberg is shown seated in the foreground, with my mother Sonia Gutianskaya (behind her on the left) and her sister Hontsia Trahtenberg (right). I know very little about my mother's parents. My mother was a very withdrawn person and told me more about my father's parents rather than about her own. My mother came from the town of Sobolevka in the Vinnitsa province of Ukraine. My grandfather's name was Motel Trahtenberg and my grandmother's name was Genia. I was named after her. I don't know what my grandfather did for a living. I believe he was a craftsman like my parental grandfather Ioyl. Motel and Genia were born around 1860. From what my mother told me, I believe their family was rather religious. My mother used to say , ?they were like everybody else in the town.? This means that they went to synagogue once a week, followed the laws of kashrut, honored the Sabbath and celebrated all Jewish holidays. They lived a rather modest life, like my father's parents. My grandfather Motel died before the Revolution of 1917. My mother said it was a good thing that he didn't live to see what was happening in the town during the Revolution and the Civil War: gangs, murder and Jewish pogroms. My mother and her sisters often hid in fields, sheds or haystacks waiting for the bandits to leave the town. My grandmother Genia wept and worried while hiding in town. She didn't know whether she would ever see her daughters again. She died in 1919. My mother's younger sister Hontsia, born in 1905, finished elementary school in Sobolevka. Around 1930 she went to Moscow and entered the Pedagogical Institute. In Moscow she married a Russian man from Yaroslavl and moved to Yaroslavl with him. Her parents respected her choice and didn't have anything against this marriage. Hontsia was a primary school teacher. Her son Arkadiy lives in Yaroslavl. Hontsia died in the mid-1980s.