Fanya Shif Axelrod

This is a photo of my cousin Fanya Shif. She was born in 1925 in Minsk, went to school, and graduated from dentistry school. She worked as a dentist. This photo was taken in 1945 in a suburb of Berlin, where she was taken by her father, Max Shif, my father's older brother. Here she is 20. She was a prisoner in the Minsk ghetto from 1941-1942. Her grandfather, two aunts and her mother were shot before her very eyes. She and her mother's older sister tried to escape from the ghetto. The Germans fired at them. But Fanya succeded in running away. She reached Rodoshkovichy near Minsk, where her family used to rent a summer cottage, and there she joined a partisan groop, where she met her future husband Yasha Axelrod. At present she lives in Chicago with her family.