A Happy Ending . . . to a Tragic Life
By Yuriy Cherepnin, Ezra Representative, Kazakhstan

Gleb, Marina, Sergey, Oleg, Oxana, and Mariya Rozentsvayg.

Mikhail Semyonovich Rozentsvayg was born in 1946 in Kazakhstan. His parents told him little about the past. He only knew that they were exiled to Kazakhstan from Russia in the Soviet years. It was here that he finished secondary school, then college and after that he worked as a mechanical engineer. While studying at college, he met his future wife Tatiana, and upon finishing their studies they got married. Within four years they had two daughters, Oxana and Marina. They lived from hand to mouth, hardly making enough to buy bread. Tatiana was not able to secure a job for a long time, so to support the family, Mikhail got a second job as an auto mechanic. At his job Mikhail fell ill with pneumonia. Yet doctors reassured him there was nothing serious to worry about. Mikhail forced himself to continue working. That finally undermined his health and in 1994 he died.

Tatiana was restless with despair. Her elder daughter Oxana had already married by that time and was living separately from her parents. Tatiana ultimately failed to recover after her husband's sudden death. In 1997 she died of extensive myocardial infarction. Her younger daughter Marina remained alone and in an attempt to relieve her loneliness, she hurriedly got married. It was soon found that her husband was an alcoholic. Sometime later Marina found that she was pregnant. She tried everything to save her family and her marriage, but her husband Anatoliy had only drinking on his mind. He also beat Marina. To protect the baby, Marina got divorced.

In 2003, her daughter Maria was born By that time her elder sister Oxana and her husband Sergei had a three year-
old son Oleg. The boy suffered from pancreactic diabetes. Sergei and Oxana were not well-off. Sergei worked as a programmer, but they also managed to help Marina. Life became very hard. Money was needed for medicines and insulin, etc. In the end Oxana's and Marina's families decide to seek opportunities to go to Israel. Even more so now that Oxana knew doctors there could help her suffering child. In 2006 they turned to the Jewish agency and it was recommended that they find documents confirming their Jewish background. Oxana and Marina addressed the
request to Ezra. By joint efforts, we managed to find all the necessary documents from Oxana and Marina's grandmother. After a short period of searching and three trips to the Israeli Consulate they got their visas and took a flight to Israel in August, 2009.