My father Iosif Poliak, picture taken around 1954 at his work in Kiev.
My father, Iosph Naumovich Poliak, was born in 1890 in Fastov, Kiev Province.
My father Iosif Poliak was born in 1890. Like all other children he received both Jewish and secular education. He finished school and then joined his father's business as his assistant.
In 1919 Petlura soldiers shot my grandfather and two of his sons - Lyova and Abram and their families in the yard of their house.
They didn't kill my father. He was very strong physically. They yoked him in the cart and made him take the boxes full of their loot to a house near the market, where they were staying.
They didn't kill my grandmother. After my father finished his job they made him climb to the roof of the house and left him there taking away the ladder. My grandfather came out of the house and started calling whether there was anyone alive. They were all dead lying in the yard: my grandfather, her sons Lev and Abram, their wives and children. At that moment my father called from the roof. Hearing his voice my grandmother fell dead from heart attack.
My father, Sonia who lived in another street and escaped the pogrom and Zalman. Living in Kiev at that time survived this tragedy. My father kept living in Fastov. He got a job at a commercial bank.
In Fastov my father worked as an accountant in a commercial organization. In Kiev he also got a job as an acountant in the Kiev Book organization. My parents were at the Urals. At first they lived in the village of Bina and then moved to the town of Revda. There was a copper-smelting factory there. My father worked at it as an acountant until the end of the war. My mother Sheindla Poliak died in 1959 in Kiev. Mamma could not live with the thought of Lyova's death, she ailed after the war and died soon. My father Iosif Poliak died in Kiev in 1971.
