Roza Levenberg and her father Ovsey Levenberg

This is a picture of me, Roza Levenberg , and my father Ovsey Levenberg in our apartment in Kiev, in 1951. Dad was born in 1889, and his Jewish name was Shyka. His parents ? grandfather Tsale and grandmother Gitl ? lived in Kiev, where they owned a café. My father observed Jewish traditions strictly when he was young. He was the only son in his family. I don?t know how it happened, but he left his family rather early. He lived an independent life and received no support from his parents. He met my mother when he was a tutor in her father's home. When the war broke out in 1941, my parents and I and other relatives fled to Stalingrad. While we were there, my mother got breast cancer and had to have surgery. We then had to flee from Stalingrad when the Germans approached. After harrowing experiences, we reached Frunze, the capital of Kirgizia, where our relatives were living in evacuation. In Frunze, I was the only one of us who could work. My father was ill by then. First I worked as a night telephone operator, then the Commissar of the Voroshylovskaya hydropower station construction site, who was a Jew, he found out that I was a Jew when he looked through my documents. He asked me to work as his assistant manager. I told him that I couldn't work during the daytime, as I didn't have any clothes. He said they would find me something, and they gave me a jacket, a skirt and a shawl. So I started working there. My mother died in Frunze in 1943. After the liberation of Kiev, I tried to take my father back there with me but was not allowed to do so. Eventually he returned from evacuation with his second wife. He lived at her place and I rented a room with neighbors. Dad died in 1958.