Today I opened an envelope of my father’s old documents — Soviet papers, Israeli papers, all the fragments of a life that started in wartime Russia and eventually led him to Israel.
This photo stopped me cold. He really was this handsome.
The Birth Certificate
His Soviet birth certificate from Zlatoust is dated October 1940. Cropped for obvious online safety reasons.
The handwriting is inconsistent, the spellings vary, and nothing matches the names he grew up using — which is exactly how Soviet-Jewish paperwork looked in that era.
The Israeli Teudat Zehut
His ID is from the early 60s, and indicates he was living in Tel Aviv.
It states he had light hair, blue eyes, and I’m very grateful I inherited those cheekbones.
His birthday appears twice: October 4th (the Soviet record) and October 14th (the date he lived by).
Two countries, two dates, same man.
The Surname Puzzle
Zeev Shamir was the name he carried in Israel. His birth father was Vashitsky — Chaim Vashitsky — though I never knew anything about him, as he apparently perished in a Soviet psychiatric ward when my father was very young due to “medication mixup” as my father only found out in the last decade or so of his life.
My grandmother’s real surname was likely Shmuklervsky, though the Soviets renamed her “Shmuilova.” And he himself ended up registered as Zahares at birth. Three surnames in one generation. Completely normal for Jewish refugees in the USSR of the 1940s.
His parents came from Łódź, Poland, though when and why they went to the USSR was never entirely clear to me.
Presence
What gets me is the presence he had, even in bureaucratic photos.
No filters, no lighting, no posing.
Just him.
I wanted to put these two documents together — because they’re the bookends of where he came from and where he ended up being buried on November 8th, 2024.
RIP Zeev Shamir. I miss you.
Totally Surreal 
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