Tag #151367 - Interview #78122 (Simon Gonopolskiy)

My father's father Israel Gonopolskiy was born in the late 1860s in the village of Petroverovka, Kherson province. I remember him well. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man. All men of our kinship were tall and had wide shoulders; people even said: the breed of Gonopolskiy. Grandfather Israel was a reserved and self-confident man. He wore traditional dark clothes: a black cap, a long jacket and boots. He had a big dark beard. My father told me that my grandfather was a farmer in Petroverovka. I don't think he owned a plot of land - I guess, he leased one. The family wasn't rich. There population in Petroverovka before World War I was Ukrainian and Jewish. There were no conflicts. My parents told me that during the Civil War [1], when various gangs [2] made pogroms [3], other villagers gave shelter in their cellars to the members of our family.