My husband Abram Turovskiy and I, Zinaida Turovskaya (Yarovskaya). Photo made in Kiev in 1962.
After studying 7 years at school I went to work at the hat factory. I was an apprentice there. I didn't work there long. I went to the "Progress" shop store - they made hats there, too. I learned to make very beautiful women's hats. I became a Komsomol member in the shop and was the leader of the Komsomol unit for 7 years. I was finishing my studies in the evening school of working young people.
At the beginning of 1960 I met my future husband Abram Turovskiy. We met at a party and liked one another at once. My husband was born in Kiev on 10 May 1936. His grandfather was a rich man. He owned a bakery in Podol. Abram's father was a military. He was sent to the front when the war began. When Abram's grandmother anâ grandmother, mother and baby-sister were on the wy to evacuation he missed the train at one of the stops.
He was sent to a children's home in Kazakhstan and was there until 1950. In the children's home the children teased and beat him for his being a Jew. When he turned 15 he ran away and went to look for his family. He went to Kiev and came to shoe factory #4 where his mother had been working before the war. He found his mother there. She was working in the laundry at the factory kindergarten. His mother's name Rachil Srulevna Podmirchan. Abram's mother told Abram that his father had perished at the front and his grandparents and sister died in the evacuation. His mother told him that she was looking for him after the war but everywhere she went she was told that he wasn't there. His mother was very happy to have her son back.
We got married in 1961. We had no wedding, just a registration of our marriage. Abram came to live with us. In 1964 we received a two-room apartment. Abram worked as a maintenance technician. He was a very skilled worker. He was supposed to get a state award for his work but he didn't get it due to his Jewish origin. His boss put him on the list of awardees, but he was reprimanded by the solid alloys trade union committee for doing so. My husband heard this discussion. This was a moral trauma for my husband and he got a stroke on that very day. He was ill for almost a year and then he went back to work. But he was badly injured at work - his hands were cut off by some machine. He became an invalid and could move only in the wheel-chair. In 1998 when my husband died he was only 62.
