Joseph's Family

These are labeled as (upper) Joseph's Brother, and (lower) Joseph's sister.  I see Grandma Bella in the upper right hand corner picture.  She is the one on the left.  The lower picture is our Argentinian Family. 

Grandpa Joe's sister was the first Soviet Lieutenant Governor of Besserabia. (Spelling?)  She had to flee when the fascists came into power.  She left and went to Japan with many of the intelligentsia who fled with her.  In Japan she became an artist model.  Many sculptures and paintings of her are still in Japanese museums. (Told to me by her son Alberto.)  She then left to join her fiance in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  On the way she stopped in San Francisco.  Grandpa Joe received a  call asking him if he wanted to see his sister.  He was waiting for another sister to arrive in this country but was delighted when he found out it was this, his favorite sister. For $10 he could have her brought to the East Coast.  When she arrived, she was surrounded by reporters.  She was the first Soviet official to reach this country.  This may have been the first Paparazzi blitz.  Uncle Sam had to sneak her in and out of the house taking her on tours of New York City. She finally left for Argentina.  She married and had three children.  Her son (I think his name was Moise) married but had no children.  He was the Communist of the family.  Miriam was a university professor, a musicologist and concert pianist.  She visited many times.  Once I held a house concert while she was staying with me.  She got really excited when the musicians started tuning up.  "I love this indigenous American music," she said.  Alberto was special.  He was the head of the International Press Association working out of Rio.  He once brought with him the photos of Che Guevara's bullet riddled body.  He spoke with a lisp.  He went to Norway where he taught Spanish. His joke was that you could tell the folks who took his Spanish classes because they all spoke Spanish with a lisp as well.  His wife was from Norway.  They has two children, Maya and Erik.  Alberto's wife fell and died when the children were quite young and Miriam helped raise them.  Alberto died on the table during a cataract operation.  I wrote back and forth with Miriam for a while and my friends visited with her when they were in Argentina.  The correspondence stopped and I have not heard from her since.  I knew that Maya had moved to Israel.  I found a Maya Shtirbu on Facebook.  The was the adult vision of Maya the child.  I wrote to her in English and she didn't answer.  I wrote to her in Spanish and she didn't answer.  I wrote again in Spanish and she denied being my cousin. (She had emigrated to Israel from Argentina, had the same name, but no luck.) No idea of what happened to Erik.