Shtempenu: in times Shtempenu defeated all other orchestras, Konotop musicians, who also were popular. Let's Remember In Konotop as in any small or big town there is a place where every man involuntarily thinks about the sense of life, about the relationships among the people, about the human's memory, and the significance of which we leave after us on the earth. The reader can guess that I mean cemetery. And every time when I come to this sacred place on Virovskiy Street, I remember people who found eternal peace here. I knew that the majority of the Jews from Konotop were buried here. He30 knew almost a thousand, who were buried on the Jewish map. About many of them, I heard different life stories, interesting “maise.” With many of them I was very close. Each of them in his time was his own unique and unrepeatable life. On Yom Kippur, according to the tradition, at my parent's grave we came to put a stone on the tombstone monument of the person with whom we had been friends for more than forty years. From the photo, I saw my dear friend, Efim Bunich looking at me. He was a great life lover, humorist, a man with encyclopedic knowledge, talented engineer physicist. He was telling me, “tell everybody living now about us. Let them remember about us. We loved our town; we used to live in it.” And I felt obligated to remember and tell the story.

I must remember David Grygorevich Udler. He was a teacher from God, a real teacher, who never felt angry even when the life was harsh for him. He always found words for everybody who was in trouble and who really needed them and needed his support. How many Konotopians taught for decades working in school number 4, this real “Tsaddik.” And, Olga Matveevna Braginskaya, gave her whole life to the Jewish school. She was the first, who began to find information about the Heroes of the USSR, Ephim Zitovskiy and Nadezhda Volkova. Just to mention, parents of both heroes were buried on Konotop soil. And, about Volkova's mother, Sofia Lvovna31 Silina, a whole novel could be written about her life.

30 The author.