Reuven and Slava Bronshtein photograph collection

Reuven Bronshtein was born on March 25, 1938 in Zhmerinka, Ukraine, near Vinnitsa. His father, Yakov Bronshtein, was a teacher and his mother, Nesyia Shwartz Bronshtein, took care of their three children. Reuven has an older sister, Roza (b. 1934) and an older brother, Abram (b. 1936). In 1941 Yakov was mobilized into the Soviet Army and in 1943 he was killed in action. Roza and her children stayed in Zhmerinka, which was under Romanian occupation. In November 1941 Roza and her children were forced into ghettos until March 15, 1944 when the Red Army liberated the area. Reuven went to high school in Odessa and later moved to Vinnitsa. In 1958 he married Slava Bereshatskaya and in 1975 they left the Soviet Union for Israel.

Slava Bronshtein was born in 1937 in Brailov, near Vinnitsa in the Ukraine. She lived with her parents, Moshe Bereshadsky and Eva Cygelman Bereshadskaya and her brother, Pietya. In September 1941 the Germans started the killing aktion in the area. Eva took Slava to Zhmerinka where they hid as Ukrainians. Later they were forced into a ghetto in Transnistria until 1944 when they were liberated by the Red Army. Pietya and most of Pietya’s family perished during the war. Eva father Shmuel Cygelman, survived, but her mother, Ruchl Nudelman Cygelman, perished as well as her sister Cygelman Chanuk and her husband, Pinye Pietya Chanuk and their two children, Izya and Bella. Slava met and married Reuven Bronshtein in 1958 and in 1975 they left for Israel.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The photographs were donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum by Reuven and Slava Bronshtein in 1999.