“Marriage Record. 1936. A Document from the Life of My Great-Grandparents Before the Tragedy”

This document is a marriage record from 1936.

It records the marriage of my great-grandmother, Olha Yevfymivna Zubenko, and my great-grandfather, Yevhenii Vasylovych Gass.

She was nineteen years old. She worked as an assistant accountant at an oil depot.

Her future husband was a molder — an industrial factory worker.

It is an ordinary official document of its time.

The beginning of a family life. Two young destinies who did not yet know what price they would have to pay for living inside a system of repression.

Later, an official correction was added to the record: my great-grandmother’s patronymic was changed from “Yevheniivna” to “Yevfymivna.”

This small handwritten note in the margin became an important confirmation of her father’s real name.

Exactly two years after this wedding, on September 29, 1938, my grandmother’s father — my great-grandfather — was executed in Kharkiv.

The family was informed of the execution in advance.

My great-grandmother came to the bridge at dawn, holding her small daughter — my grandmother — in her arms.

And she witnessed his final hour.

Today this marriage record is more than just a registration of a wedding.

It is evidence of the lives of people who found themselves inside a regime that killed its own citizens and left their children with a lifelong memory of fear and loss.

Before the arrest.

Before the dawn.

Before the execution.