These are letters that my great-grandfather Aron wrote to my great-grandmother Manya in the weeks before the Nazi invasion of Kiev.
Manya had evacuated with my grandfather Yaakov, who was then seven years old, to Ulyanovsk (about a thousand miles away). Aron stayed behind in Kiev with his parents (Abram and Leah), sisters-in-law, and young nieces and nephews (ranging from infants to preschoolers).
Aron eventually served in the Civil Defense and was finally surrounded near the city of Zhitomir shortly after the last letter was written.
When Aron was captured the prisoners were checked for circumcision and each Jew, including Aron, was immediately executed.
Aron's brothers were later killed at the front. Aron's parents along with the wives and children of the other Zakon brothers all went to Babi Yar and died in the ravine on September 29th and/or September 30th, 1941. Of the dozen Zakon family members who stayed in Kiev only one, Pasha Zakon, survived the war.
Transcription and translation by Stella Sokolovskaya and Arkady Rubinsteyn from the Evidence of the Holocaust project in Chicago.
