Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Esfir Lupyan - December 17, 2007

Family

This interview was conducted by Sidney Bolkosky.

Uh, can you tell me your name please and where you were born.

My name Esfir Lupyan and uh, my nickname in uh, where I was born, is Tira. In Russian pronunciation, Tira. I was born in Minsk, Belorussia in 1936, July seventh... July 7. Um, it was before war, before second war. I had my parents, brothers, and big family.

How big was the family?

Uh, my, my closer family of my parents... Mama, Papa, and my brother Ge... Gresha, Gresha in Russian. And we have, we have big family from my father's... father's side and another big family from mother's side. All, all live in Minsk that time before war.

How, how many aunts and uncles did you have, do you think?

Uncles?

Aunts and uncles. How many were... How many aunts and uncles did you have?

What does that mean?

Uh, your father's and mother's brothers and sisters.

Yeah. What I remember from, from our uh ??? Father was uh, sixth child in his family. My father, he was sixth. So, he before uh, he, he had five...

Siblings.

...brother and sister. Yeah. One sister and other brother.

And they had children too?

Oh yeah, everybody, but they, they... A couple stay in Minsk, but one brother what I remember, he told me he immigrate way long time the elder, elder brother... older. He immigrate in Shanghai and then in America and they stopped in New York and they had--whatever he told me much, much later--they opened something business, like uh, barb... barber?

Barbershop.

Barbershop? Uh, he... Definitely he die, but his family somewhere in eastern Europe and I don't know...

You don't know them.

No, no. A couple, yeah, but I don't write to, to locate them.


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