Esfir Lupyan - December 17, 2007
Family 2
So, how many do you think total--aunts, uncles, cousins, first cousins--that you knew, that you remember.
Um...
The number.
Each brother who was in Minsk and sister, they have two children. All of them, they have each two children. From mother's side, it was brother, brother uh, he left son and wife because he was in Red Army. And uh, so it was like ten, ten children. Let's see, ten... nine children, small children.
Each one?
Each one, yes. Uh, now each from father's side...
Yeah.
...and from mother's... So, altogether they have ten. Ten chil... I guess, I, I cannot tell you what I...
So, the to... total family would have been... A hundred?
Uh, total... Total is uh, is ten. Ten, probably around twenty, twenty people. If parents and children.
And how many survived the war?
Just me.
Just you.
And my mom. Yes. No, no, no. One uh, my cousin from father's side uh, his nephew... No, niece, niece.
Niece.
Niece. He was very young in the army, about fifteen years, sixteen, seventeen. He was in army, so he survive. He run out from ghetto. He run out, run out from ghetto and he go voluntarily in army. That... He survive. He survive from army. But others, all, all were killed. My parents, grandparents, they were killed.
What was your fam... Your family religious family?
I guess yes. Yeah, I, I guess yes, because when my father uh, he was uh, ??? His father died when he was ten years old and mother was... Uh, mother died when she gave birth him. So, my father grow on street. But year... For a year, he attend cheder. Cheder? School.
Mm-hm.
Uh, that what he told me. But in cheder here, he taught the Torah and they was, you know, religious. And, when in nineteen seventy... seventy, I forgot when my mom died uh, nineteen eighty... eighty-five and she died, my father he never did it before. He stayed on east wall and pray and prayed for Mom. And that's, I... First time I see that he remember all prayers and he talk to God.
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