"In the center of this picture you can see Abram Sokol, the brother of my grandmother Rosa (Rakhil) with his friends by the sides. All of them lived in the Jewish colony Velyky Nagartav near Mykolaiv. These settlements-colonies arose during the reign of Queen Catherine. German colonists lived nearby. Under Soviet rule a collective farm was established on these lands. The colonists bought a lot of equipment, a tractor, there were workshops, a hospital, a school, and young people went to study in big cities. The famine of the early 1930s barely affected them. My family moved to Kharkiv before the war. In the 60s one of my grandmother's brothers visited that place. There was nothing except the old cemeteries, no one lived there anymore. The Germans were taken into exile and no one returned. Jews were killed on the spot. Uncle Abram was evacuated along with the factory where he worked to Ashgabat. He died there during an earthquake of 1948. He was an artisan, and his cap is like that because fashion was militarized".

Comment by Olha Ostroverkh.

This photo is contributed by Olha Ostroverkh.