Ada Dal's family

This is a family photo, taken in Zhytomyr in the 1920s. My father Veniamin Dal and my mother Maria Vulikh (standing). Sitting from left to right are my grandmother (supposedly), my great-grandmother (supposedly) and my grandfather on my father's side. I don?t know anything about them. I don't know where Mama met my father in 1930, but I know that my father had already had a family. I don't know anything about that previous family of his. My parents just lived together for some time. But then, after I was born in 1932, they got officially married although without any grand ceremonies. They had a very good life together. They had lots of Jewish friends. They got together to party and used to dance and enjoy themselves until late at night. It was either at our place or somebody else's. My parents often took me with them. We had lots of books at home. My parents read classic and modern literature in Russian, and newspapers, of course. They followed what was going on the country and discussed it, but they didn't speak out their opinion in my presence. I was five or six years old then. At this delicate age it is difficult to explain to a child what she can tell her neighbor and what she should keep for herself. Later, after the war, my mother told me how critical my grandparents were about the events of the 1930s, how clearly they understood things and had no illusions. In summer we rented a dacha [cottage] in a village near the town and stayed there. We put our luggage on a big truck and boarded it ourselves.