Graduation certificate of Galina Shkolnikova's father Idel Farber

This is the graduation certificate issued to my father in 1915 at the commercial school in Nikopol. His student picture is attached to the document. After my father finished the commercial school in 1915, he was drafted to the army. From that moment on and to his dying day he had the nickname 'Soldier', which he was very proud of. To tell you the truth, grandfather Mordekhay took some appropriate efforts to enlist his son as self-determinative to the regiment. [Editor's note: a form of draft to the Russian Army during the years of World War I, which provided some privileges as compared to privates.] I don't know if he managed to participate in World War I military operations. He was a soldier at the beginning of the Civil War [1918-1921], but soon returned home and later served in the Red Army as a corps man for four months. In 1920 he entered the Kharkov Technological Institute and graduated in 1924 as a chemical engineer. After graduation he was assigned to Donbass, the Donetsk coal fields in the south-east of Ukraine, where he worked at JSC Koksobenzol in the town of Artyom. There was a friendly team of young people, engineers and doctors, and he met my mother in that group.