Moisey Goihberg's maternal grandmother, Blima Voloshyna

My maternal grandmother, Blima Voloshyna, on a photo taken in Yaruga in the 1930s. She was a very nice, kind grandmother. I used to call on her during intervals at school and she prepared tea for me and gave me cherry jam. My grandfather Gersh Voloshyn was a vine grower. I don't think the wine his vineyard produced was kosher wine. He sold it to Jewish and non-Jewish customers. He owned 2 hectares of vineyard, which enabled him to have a comfortable life. His sons helped him with the work at the vineyard. They all worked very hard, but my grandfather was a very cheerful and merry man and there was always a lot of laughter in my grandparents' house. My grandfather's wife, Blima, was a housewife. They had four children: my mother's older brothers Moisey and Osher, my mother Lisa, and her younger sister Rachel. Their family wasn't very religious. They went to synagogue and celebrated all the Jewish holidays, mainly in tribute to tradition. They spoke Yiddish at home, but they were fluent in Russian and Ukrainian. My parents also spoke Yiddish to one another, but they spoke Russian to me. They had 4 children, two sons, Moisey, born in 1882, and Osher, born in 1892, and two daughters, my mother, born in 1894 and Rachel, born in 1898. Her husband, Moisey Serson, their two daughters, Dusia and Riva, and their son Naum lived in Yaruga and worked at my grandfather's vineyard. My grandmother Blima lived with them. During World War II the Germans occupied Yaruga in the summer of 1941. They exterminated some of the Jews there and moved on. Yaruga as well as the rest of Vinnitsa region was in what is called Transnistria. All the Jews of Yaruga were taken to the ghetto. Rachel, her husband Moisey, their daughters and my grandmother Blima were in the ghetto. Life there was horrible, with starvation, cold, diseases, tortures and raids. The Jews in the ghetto surrendered their jewelry or other valuables in order to ransom themselves from the Romanians. Rachel's family survived. They were liberated in 1944. My poor grandmother Blima starved to death in the ghetto. After the war Rachel's family stayed in Yaruga. Rachel and Moisey died in the mid-1970s. My cousins Dusia, Riva and Naum live in New York. They moved to America in the 1970s.