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What were Shlomo's likes and dislikes? He never talked about these things, but the children watched and learned. Mostly he loved to celebrate the Jewish holidays. He liked going to synagogue, praying, and studying the Torah. He liked to talk about Jewish history as revealed by the Torah. He had a great voice on the few occasions when he sang, and he was very skillful at telling stories. Iosif also remembers his father reading the newspaper, especially one in Yiddish about Jewish life. He would also read the Russian newspaper Pravda (meaning "truth"), although he would believe little in it. What people did he admire? It was clear that he admired all the figures in the Torah: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, and Joshua. He talked oen about these figures, not as historical figures to be studied, but as lives to be continued. He also loved Israel, and celebrated when the State of Israel was established in 1948. Whenever he had the chance, he listened to Israeli radio. In terms of more modern figures he admired, Iosif recalls that Shlomo expressed admiration for the intelligence and leadership of Otto von Bismark, one of the most prominent European statesmen of the 19th century. When the German Empire was declared in 1871, Bismarck served as its first chancellor. It wasn't easy to get Shlomo to express contempt for people, but if he admired the first chancellor of Germany, he absolutely hated the last figure to occupy that role, the chancellor of the Third Reich, Adolph Hitler. He also had contempt for communism and all its leaders, including Vladimir Lenin and most especially Iosif Stalin. Shlomo believed that communism was unrealistic, that attempts to prop it up with violence just made life miserable for millions of people. He thought communism was evil and a doomed project. He didn't live long enough to see it for himself, but Shlomo was correct. Communism finally collapsed in 1989. Iosif and the children carefully watched their father at the Shabbat table to determine what dishes he liked to eat. Shlomo was especially fond of gefilte fish, a fact which makes sense because Hava's gefilte fish was generally acknowledged to be the best in Gorodok. Shlomo didn't like alcoholic drinks. Even when ritual called for blessings over the uit of the vine, he generally drank just a sip or two. He preferred tea, which he drank in endless quantities. More About Shlomo More About Shlomo At the time of Shlomo's death, Iosif was enrolled in the Air Force Engineering Academy in Moscow, taking final examinations. Although he had one more examination to take, he received a waiver and quickly took a train to Saltykovka to attend his father's funeral. The family said the Kaddish prayer for the dead and Shlomo Volsun was buried in the Jewish cemetery, next to his beloved wife Hava. Aer a year, according to the Jewish custom, a headstone was erected to honor the gravesite. Many years later Lev Volsun, Iosif 's son and Shlomo's grandson, returned to Russia om the United States as a businessman. Lev took some time off om work and visited the cemetery to honor the memories of his grandmother and grandfather. He found the cemetery very poorly maintained and the headstones broken and scattered on the ground. This situation, unfortunately, is typical of many Jewish cemeteries in the countries of the former Soviet Union. Lev took action. He commissioned new monuments to be placed on the graves of his grandparents. He also paid for the gravesites' perpetual maintenance. In this way, the memories of Shlomo and Hava Volsun are honored by the generations that followed.

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