Tag #141317 - Interview #94042 (Isabella Karanchuk)

My father Yefim (Jewish name Haim) Lerman was born in 1905. He studied in cheder and then became a shoemaker’s assistant for a Jewish shoemaker in his shop. He met my mother in the club where my mother acted in the theater and my father played the tuba in the orchestra. The young people fell in love with each other. They were photographed together for the first time in Mogilyov in 1924 – my mother was 16, and father – 19 years old. I don’t know exactly, when my parents got married. My father was already a Komsomol [7] member and protested against having a wedding at the synagogue. They registered their wedding in a registry office and had a small wedding party with relatives and friends at home.
Shortly after the wedding my parents moved to Kharkov where my father went to work in a shoe shop. I was born on 8 August 1928. I was named Isabella and all I know about it is that I was named some aunt Beti. At first my parents wanted to name me Bertha, but then decided for Bella that developed into Isabella. My parents rented a room in a communal apartment [8] where my parents slept behind a curtain. Soon my father received a small two-bedroom apartment in a one-storied house. I don’t remember any details of our life in Kharkov. All I remember is a big yard with many children, whose names I don’t remember, playing in it. I don’t remember the famine in the early 1930s [9], probably because my parents tried to protect me from knowing it.