Children of the Holocaust Yulia Genina

CHILDREN of the HOLOCAUST

Yulia Genina

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Yulia Genina
Born 1930 in Kharkov, Ukraine She was 11 years old when the Germans invaded her city. She, her mother, and twin sister fled the Nazis, moving East by freight train. They became refugees with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

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Yulia, age 3 or 4.
Family photo before the war with extended family. Yulia’s grandmother, Faina, is in the center. Yulia’s mother, Vera, is to the right of Faina, and beside her is Yulia’s father, Abraham. Yulia (left) and her twin sister, Yevgenia (right) are wearing matching black dresses.
Yulia (left), age 4, with her twin sister, Yevgenia.
Yulia’s maternal aunt, Bella Mirenskaya, was a doctor and held the rank of colonel in the Soviet army during World War II. She helped Yulia’s family during and after the war.
Yulia age 18 (left) and 19 (right) in Kharkov.
Yulia with her daughter, Irina, age 2, in 1956.
Yulia with her husband, Yuri Pilevskiy, and daughter, Irina, in 1975. She met Yuri when she was 14 and married him at age 22.
Yulia with daughter, Irina, in 1961, on vacation in Crimea at the Black Sea.
Yulia with her husband, Yuri, and daughter, Irina. Yuri worked as an electrical engineer. Irina later became an electrical engineer.
Yulia (right) in 1980 with coworkers from the chemical lab where she spent her career. Because of anti-Semitic discrimination, she wasn’t able to find work as a doctor. She worked as a researcher in the field of nutrition.
Yulia, age 70. She came to the United States as a widow when she was 65 and had to learn English.
Yulia, age 75.
Yulia with her twin sister, Yevgenia, age 80.
Yulia with her two grandsons, Konstantin (left) and Stanislav (right). They emigrated to the United States a year before Yulia.
Yulia and grandson Stanislav.
In 2019, Yulia was invited to the Pima County Courthouse to read the chapter she contributed to the two-volume collection To Tell our Stories: Holocaust Survivors of Southern Arizona, published by Jewish Family and Children’s Services of Southern Arizona.
CHILDREN of the HOLOCAUST
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