Irina Lidskaya, her mother Dina Itskovich and older brother Yura

This is me - Irina Lidskaya, my mother and my older brother Yuri. The photo was taken in Vorzel, near Kiev, in 1940.

Yuri was born in Kharkov in 1926. He went to school there. I was born 8 years later. A year after my birth my parents moved to Kiev, where my parents were offered jobs as lecturers at the Kiev Medical Institute. We lived in a separate two-room apartment. It was very comfortable, with central heating, running water, and there was a gas stove in the kitchen. Yura and I had our own room. Mamma thought that her children needed the biggest and brightest room in the house. We had some furniture and a piano -- a luxury at that time. We had a unique library of fiction, medical books and Russian classical literature. The books were used to prepare lectures, and they never got dusted. Of the Jewish authors I remember Sholom Aleichem. He was the favorite author in our family. We also had the Russian translation of Perets Markish's poems. We had a radio, and Yura had a bicycle.