Vladimir Goldman and his grandson Dennis Bykov

I and my grandson Dennis Bykov. The photo was taken in Odessa in 2001. This is the first day of Chanukkah. Dennis is lighting the first candle. My daughter, Larissa, was born in 1963. She finished secondary school in 1981 and entered the Institute of Navy Engineers. She graduated in 1986 and got a job as a construction engineer with a design company. Since 1990 she has worked for Jewish organizations. In 1995 she married Alexandr Bykov. He is Russian and a candidate of technical sciences. Their son, Dennis, was born in 1996. Last fall he started the first grade of a private Jewish school. He studies Hebrew and Jewish traditions. In the late 1980s Jewish life in Odessa started to revive. A Jewish cultural association was founded in 1989. The Sochnut [Jewish Agency] and the Joint [American Jewish Distribution Committee] also set up their offices in town. The Jewish community got back the ownership of the main synagogue in Richelieu Street. Two Jewish newspapers are published, Or sameach and Shomrey shabos. In 1993 I was invited to the Joint and offered the position of the director of the Jewish charity center. They convinced me to accept their proposal, and I quit my work at the Institute. This was at the very beginning of the organization's work. We got an office in the Jewish Cultural Center in Vorovskogo Street, and later we moved to Polskiy Spusk. In 1996 the Jewish community from Baltimore gave our charity center a big office in Troitskaya Street. We started by providing services to 40 people that were registered at the Jewish Cultural Association. At present we provide services to about nine thousand people in Odessa and Odessa region. .