My mother Vera (Dvoira) Usherenko.
My mother's name was Dvoira Usherenko, nee Grinberg. She was born in Gornostai-Polie near Chernobyl in 1886. There was a dynasty of the Tverskiye tsadiks in this town, too. The majority of population in this town was Jewish. Gornostai-Polie was famous for its strong Jewish traditions and so was Chernobyl. Her father Morduch Grinberg was a melamed. He was teaching younger children. They were also very poor.
His sister Surka was my mother's friend and she must have introduced her cousin to my mother. My father was an extremely handsome and honest man. They fell in love with each other and got married. I mean, they didn't have a Jewish wedding - both of them were poor, but they began to live together. I was born in 1922 when my mother was 36 and my father was 48 years old.
My mother earned a little by sewing and we could manage more or less. Some time before the war my mother was invited as a consultant to a dressmaking shop. Besides consulting my mother did a lot of sewing for them, although she had no compensation for this extra work.
