Emma Bogopolskya

Emma. We have the least information about Emma, the youngest child and Nathan and Golda’s only daughter. What we do know is that she was born on January 15, 1919 in Astrakhan, that she was studying at university and planing to become a doctor like several of her brothers, when German forces invaded Russia.

In 1938, Emma graduated from high school with highest honors. This gave her the right to go to any institute without exams. And in 1938 she became a student at the Leningrad Pediatric Medical Institute.

1938 was a terrible year in Russia, the time of the Great Terror. Emma became a student, and, in the same year, her brother Alexander was arrested and by the end of 1938 he would be shot.

Apparently, she was visiting her parents in Kislovodsk in the summer of 1942 when invading Nazi forces suddenly broke through Russian lines in the North Caucasus, entered Kislovodsk and soon after rounded up and massacred nearly all the Jewish population of the region.

Emma, together with her parents, was murdered in September, 1942 by Einsatzgruppen death squads deployed by the invading Nazis. For more on this, please see the page on Holocaust and Soviet Terror on this site.

We have few documents relating to Emma’s life, but we expect to add to our library soon.

We are in the process of assembling additional information about Emma, her life and her untimely death.