Grigori Abidor?s family

This is a picture of my husband Grigori Abidor?s family. From left to right are my husband's mother Maria Abidor, nee Golovanevskaya, his younger sister Beba, Grigori, his older sister Golda and his father Moisey Abidor. The photo was taken in Goloskovo, Odessa region, in 1925.

My future husband, Grigori Abidor, was a 2nd-year student of the Heat Engineering Faculty at Odessa Industrial College. Grigori had come to Odessa from Khmelnitskiy. Grigori and two other students rented a room from a janitor on the 1st floor in our house. We met by chance and began to see each other. Less than a year later Grigori proposed to me and I agreed to be his wife. I got married in 1940 after finishing my 1st year at Odessa Medical University. We didn't have a wedding party. We just had a civil ceremony at a registry office.

Grigori was born in Goloskovo in 1919. His Jewish name was Gersh. His father Moisey Abidor, born in 1890, was a joiner. His mother Maria Abidor, nee Golovanevskaya, born in 1894, was a dressmaker and worked at home. Her father Mendel Golovanevski was a blacksmith and my mother-in-law worked at her father's forge before she got married. Maria was a tall and very strong woman. My husband's family wasn't religious. Apart from Grigori, they also had two daughters. Golda, the older one, was born in 1917 and Beba, the younger one, in 1926. In the 1930s their family moved to Khmelnitskiy. Grigori finished secondary school there and left to study in Odessa.

My husband and I shared our room with my mother and sister. We partitioned off a corner of the room with a curtain and that was our first dwelling. We were poor, but we were used to it. My husband and I received a stipend that we shared with my mother and sister. My father sent me monthly allowances keeping his promise to support me while I studied at the Medical University. Grigori had additional earnings by unloading railcars at the railway station at night. Many students made extra money with that kind of work.