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This is my paternal grandfather Samuel Brover. This photo was taken in Ursat'yevskaya town, Tashkent region in 1943. This is the only existing photograph of my grandfather. There is a national Uzbek carpet in the background.
My paternal grandfather Samuel Brover was born in Petroverovka village [present Zhovten'] in 1878 [editor's note: Petroverovka was a small town in Kherson province Tiraspol district (present Odessa region). According to the census of 1897 there were 1 749 residents and 819 of them were Jews]. My grandfather was a shoemaker. In the middle of the 1890s my grandfather married Udia, a Jewish girl from his town. They were probably poor since before the revolution of 1917, when my grandfather was already married, he went to America looking for a better life. He stayed there a little over a year and then returned home. My grandfather knew Yiddish and could read and write in it and he also knew Russian. My grandfather was quiet, but persistent. He never served in the army. He wore common clothes. He didn't wear a hat or have payes. My grandfather liked the Soviet regime since he saw that there were no pogroms or attacks on Jews, but he never became a member of the Communist Party. When collectivization began in 1928, in Ivanovka village of Odessa region the Jewish kolkhoz 'Schtern' ['star' in Yiddish] near the Yeremeyevka station in 50 km from Odessa. My grandfather and grandmother moved to Ivanovka and joined the kolkhoz.
During the Great Patriotic War we evacuated to Ursat'yevskaya town in Tashkent region in Uzbekistan. Grandfather Samuel became a janitor. My sister Rosa and grandmother once went to my grandfather's work to come home with him. Rosa saw my grandfather and another old Jew swaying back and forth saying something in sing-song voices. My grandmother explained that they were praying.
We reevacuated from Ursat'yevskaya in late 1944 by train. On the way my grandfather died and we buried him in the Jewish cemetery in Kotovsk town Odessa Region.
