Because both of her parents had died by the time Vita was five years old, she went to live with her cousins. At the age of 18, Vita married Iosif Rivkina, and the couple moved to Minsk where they raised three daughters-Hacia, Dora and Berta.
Iosif worked in a state owned factory that made furniture
1933-39: By the early 1930s, the Rivkina family lived on Novomenitskaya Street in central Minsk, near the Svisloch River.
Hacia, Vita's oldest daughter was a talented singer and was known as the best singer in the neighborhood.
Dora, the second daughter excelled in swimming and loved to swim in the Svisloch River
By the late1930s Minsk was filled with Polish refugees fleeing the German invasion.
1940-43: On June 27, 1941, the German army reached Minsk. The family's house was bombed and Vita and her family had to sleep outdoors.
Dora escaped and joined the partisans but was soon caught by the Germans. The guards ordered them to identify any Jews, otherwise they would all be shot. Another women pointed to Dora. The Germans bound Dora's hands, tied a rock around her neck, threw her in a river and shot her.
By August, Vita's family was forced to move to 46 Obuvnaya Street in Minsk's ghetto. There, starving people made holes in the wire fence confining the ghetto to secretly search for food on the "Aryan" side. Those caught were shot. To feed her family, Vita sold whatever the family still possessed to buy food. Once she was caught trying to sell her husband's coat. The policeman seized the coat and put it on. Then he gave her his own coat and beat her savagely.
Vita's youngest daughter, Berta, escaped from the ghetto before it was liquidated. Vita, Iosif and Hacia were deported to an unknown concentration camp and never heard from again.