The Family (39 page)

Etl and her nephew Shimonkeh in 1932, the year he fell ill with scarlet fever.

Sonia, who left her family in Rakov in August 1932 to move to the Promised Land—“I behaved like a grown-up,” she declared, “and did not take a cent from my parents.”

Sonia and Chaim at Herzliya in 1932, shortly after Sonia made aliyah.

Workers' housing at Herzliya in the 1930s.

Chaim and Sonia on their wedding day, December 7, 1933.

A studio portrait of Shepseleh, Doba, and their two sons, Shimonkeh and Velveleh, taken in Vilna around 1933 or 1934.

From left to right: Beyle, Doba, Velveleh, Shepseleh, and Shimonkeh relaxing in the woods by their dacha outside Vilna, about 1935.

From left to right: William, Itel, Bert sitting on his mother Anna's lap, Hyman, and Beatrice, vacationing by the shore, possibly in Florida, around 1935. Vicki, the terrier, belonged to Itel and William.

Etl, her daughter Mireleh, and her husband, Khost, around 1937.

Shimonkeh, circa 1937, at the family's dacha.

Brothers Shimonkeh (left) and Velveleh playing chess in the country outside Vilna while their father, Shepseleh, supervises.

Brothers Shalom Tvi (right) and Avram Akiva [Abraham], separated for three decades, reunited in the summer of 1939, when Shalom Tvi left Poland to come to New York.

Beyle and Doba in Vilna, February 19, 1941. Despite the war and her poor health, Beyle had made the trip from Rakov to attend her grandson Shimonkeh's bar mitzvah.