My family: I, Golda Gutner (nee - Gurevich), my daughters and my husband Benyamin Gutner. 1953; Konotop.
The Vengerov family settled with my parents after the war. And before the war they lived next door to the family of my future husband. They were great friends. My aunt Soreh-Liba nursed my future husband, young Benyumchik. He was treated like their own child. So, on the October Revolution holiday in 1945, Benyamin Gutner had a leave from the military. He came from Germany to see his parents and came to visit my parents and the Vengerovs. He came, wearing a naval uniform. He was happy to see me. We sat and talked for a while. He found out when I was going back to Kiev and said he would be going together with me. Before the war he worked in Kiev and had friends there. He wanted to see these friends and walk the streets of Kiev. He still had time to do that. His mother gave him a whole suitcase of food. So, he took his suitcase and my bag and we got on the train. When we came to Kiev, my sister was happy to see him alive. In the morning I went to work, and in the evening, my sister said that he had asked her whether I would refuse to marry him should he make a proposal.
Benyusik and I went to the theater. In the break he went to the buffet and bought me a bar of chocolate. It cost 100 rubles then! I told him I would not eat it at the theater but at home, together with my sister Ida. It was a rare occasion when somebody could eat chocolate, because it was right after the war.
So, then he mastered up boldness and made me a proposal. He had to serve some more and then he wanted to marry me. I said I was worried about being 29 years old and two years older than he. To this he said that he wanted to have a quiet and good wife. And with that he left.
We had no wedding ceremony: we simply had a dinner at my parents' house and invited close relatives. My aunt, his parents and cousins came. After the wedding we returned to Kiev.
And on May 19, 1947, my daughter Sima was born. She was named in honor of my father's mother.
Our second daughter, Bella, was born four years later. She was named in honor of my husband's grandmother, Beile. After the birth of my second daughter I did not work for 16 years until my children became more or less independent.
Prior to the war we sensed no anti-Semitism at all, but after the war our children and us felt it all the time - at school and especially in entering university. Sima finished school with honors, and in her written exam in mathematics (in entering the Kiev Polytechnic Institute) she received an excellent mark, but at the next oral exam she was given a poor mark. She was able to enter the correspondence department of the Aviation Institute only a few years later, when she was already working. Bella also had problems with entering university. But even though we had problems with anti-Semitism, I'm sure I would have never endured emigration.
My husband was a worker, and most of his life he worked as a plumber at construction objects. He died in Kiev in 1998.
