Isaac Fridkin

This is a picture of my grandmother Pesia Osterovskaya's brother Isaac Fridkin. The photo was taken in Romanova Studio in the town of Novouzinsk, Samara province, on 3rd April 1915. Isaac is wearing his military uniform with a red cross on his sleeve. He was an assistant doctor. The photo is signed on the back with the words: 'For the memory of my darling parents from their loving son Isaac Fridkin'. Before the Revolution of 1917 my mother's family lived in the small village of Kalygarka in Kiev region. I don't know anything about this village. My grandfather, Moisey Ostrovski, was born in the 1880s. He was a forest warden. Grandmother Pesia was also born in the 1880s and came from a wealthy merchant's family. Her father, Morduch Fridkin, was a grain dealer. Grandmother Pesia was educated at home like all Jewish girls. She could read and write in Yiddish, knew prayers by heart and was good at housekeeping. She had brothers and sisters, but I only knew one of them: her brother Isaac. I liked to look at his photograph. He was a courageous military man with a red cross on his sleeve. He was photographed when he served in the tsarist army in 1915. He was an assistant doctor. Isaac disappeared during World War I. He must have perished.