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Gregory (Girsh) Gutman was born in Kiev, Ukraine (Russian Empire) in 1890. His parents were Leiba Gutman and Chaya Benioff. It was very difficult for Jews to get accepted to a gymnasium, Gregory didn’t only get accepted to the most prestigious gymnasium in Kiev, he graduated gymnasium as a valedictorian and was awarded a gold medal for academic distinction. This allowed him to get higher education (otherwise Jews were not accepted to Universities in the Russian Empire).
Gregory became an engineer specializing in Forestry. He taught Forestry at the Agricultural University in Kyiv and was also working as a senior technical expert for the Ministry of Forestry after the Revolution. He married Anna Kauffman and they had two children, Yan Gutman (born in 1925) and Helen Gutman (born in 1937). Gregory got arrested during Stalin’s purges when Helen was only a few months old. In 1938 he was executed in Kyiv. The family lost everything, including their apartment in Kyiv, and had to move from one family friend to another to survive.
Family members faced hardships and children were labeled as children of the “enemy of the people”. Yan Gutman was killed in World War II at just 19 years old. Anna and Helen survived the war and the Holocaust by evacuating to Kazakhstan and returned to Kiev in 1945. After Stalin’s death all ridiculous accusations of espionage were overturned and Gregory Gutman was rehabilitated.
