Vinnitsa 1918 - 1930

Larisa was born on May 1, 1918, according to her telling, on Lag B’Omer, in Vinnitsa, Ukraine. She was the first child of a young couple, Shaya Striliver, 22,  and Fanya, née Volis, 20. 

Larisa in 1918

Shaya came from a simple Vinnitsa Jewish family with 6 children.

Shaya Striliver at 22, around 1918

                                                         
 Fanya came from a family of lost wealth, one of 3 girls: Fanya, Polina and Anya. One of her sisters, Anya, had TB. The girls were orphaned earl. Fanya was the elsest and in charge.

Fanya Striliver around 1918

Shaya met Fanya, a dark-haired beauty, was smitten and married her, taking her in with her sisters. Larisa was born within the first year of their marriage.

Shaya Striliver, a man with only 4 years of  elementary school education, was an astute businessman. His specialty were horses and he did well. He bought a house with a garden for his growing family. The family lived there until Larisa was 3 years old but it figured in her stories as a magical place of fruit trees, servants and the hated cream-of-wheat with jam that just refused to go down.

In the meantime, while one of Fanya’s sisters, Anya, lived with the Strilivers, her other sister, Polina, married a young man, Solomon Aisiks. The young couple illegally crossed the border in 1922 and made their way to Argentina. Fanya and Polina loved each other very much and were dreaming of reunion.  Once the Aisikses got settled, they sent for the Strilivers. The family was supposed to move to Argentina but, according to my mother’s telling, the night before the departure, her father, Shaya, got ‘cold feet’. He was afraid of the unknown land and could not leave his own extended family behind.

In 1924 the Strilivers’ second daughter, Anna (Nyusya) was born. At the same time the borders of the country were sealed shut and the chance of getting out of Ukraine, already part of the USSR, was irredeemably lost. Polina and Fanya corresponded until 1937, when the Stalin's brutal regime made such correspondence unsafe.

The Striliver family circa 1928. Larisa is between her parents. An interesting fact: the necklace Larisa is wearing in the picture  somehow persevered in the life's shuffle and I remember it well into my mother's 50ies.

Shaya was doing very well in his business, since the Red Army used a lot of horses. He prospered as much as anybody could prosper under the Soviet regime. In early 1920ies the house, into which Shaya had brought his young bride, was confiscated and the family lived in tight squalor which was the hallmark of the Soviet Union. But during the famines of the 30ies the family did not go hungry. Which was a huge accomplishment in those times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932–33