Revekka-Liya Rozina and Esphir Voloshyna's family

This is a picture of my mother, Revekka-Liya Rozina, nee Gurtovaya (first from left, sitting) and my great-aunt Esphir Voloshyna's family. The photo was taken somewhere near Kiev in the 1930s. My mother's name was Revekka-Liya Rozina, nee Gurtovaya. She had a double name. In the course of time, the family members called her Liya, and her childhood friends were calling her Venia. She was born in Fastov in 1898. Mama didn't have a higher education. She finished grammar school in Kiev and entered Kiev Medical Institute in 1919. In 1920 or 1921 Mama went to Povolzhye to help fight the famine there. She helped to arrange canteens or other catering facilities. Besides that, she was involved in the distribution of humanitarian aid that was provided by the Americans. This famine was arranged by the Bolsheviks in order to suppress the citizens that weren't willing to accept the socialist revolution. People like my mother didn't understand the actual cause of the famine and made every effort to help those who were starving. Mama told me that they were unwilling to let volunteers go to famine-stricken areas. Mama returned in 1924, but she couldn't continue her studies, because she had been away for too long. She took a course in planning and got a job as a planning economist at the alcohol factory in Kiev. My grandmother's sister, Esphir Voloshyna, nee Galperina, was born in the 1880s. She finished Russian grammar school in Kiev. I don't know whether she had a higher education. She worked at the library of the Academy of Sciences in Kiev from the middle of the 1930s until retirement. She was married to Yakov Voloshyn, a Jewish man. She had two children: a son, Iosif, and a daughter, Liya. In the late 1930s Iosif entered a Navy college in Leningrad. He was 16. After finishing it he worked on various military ships. He was the captain of a submarine. He died in 1994. Liya, Rubashevskaya after her husband, worked at the library with her mother. Esphir died in 1967. Liya died in 1989.