Tag #141553 - Interview #103851 (Fira Usatinskaya Biography)

I was born in Ilintsy on 12th February 1924. I was named after my grandmother. My brother Srul, named after our grandfather, was born in 1926. My parents were very poor. They rented an apartment. I don’t remember anything about Ilintsy. My mother told me that it was a typical small town with the majority of the population being Jewish. There was a market and a synagogue in the center and all residents knew everything about each other’s life. My father was a teacher, but in those hard years there were few people that wanted to get education and he didn’t have many pupils. He took to any work – he was an assistant in a shop and an assistant joiner – but the family still didn’t have enough food. My older brother and sister, Beila’s children, thought that my mother was to blame for their poverty since she gave all food to her own children – my brother and I. Maria suffered from this jealousy most of all. She wrote letters complaining to Uncle Yudko in Lugansk and he took her to his family every summer. This didn’t change the situation in our family. In fall Maria returned and was even more bitter and intolerant. However, all the other children in our family got along well, and we stayed friends for the rest of our life.