Zelik Krichever

Zelik Krichever

Zelik Krichever, my wife Maya's father. This photo was taken in Kiev in 1934 after he finished college.

My late wife Maya was born in Kiev in 1926. Her father Zelik Krechiver, born in 1896, an old communist, worked as chief of the planning department of the Ministry of Light Industry. Her mother Daria Shapchenko, born in 1908, very young, 16-17 years old, a beautiful Ukrainian woman, was a cleaning woman in this ministry and that was where they met and got married. Later she finished a college and became a design artist. Maya was their only child, but before the war her parents separated.

When the war began, her father before going to the front, made his daughter sit on his lap, gave her some money and clothes and said, ‘Go to Molotov’ where his brother and sister lived. Her mother was the director of a museum in Lubny. She must have perished during another raid. There is no information about what happened to her. The father perished at the front defending Kiev in 1941.  

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