Bliznyanskaya (née Roitman) Khanna (Channa) Zelmanovna (27/09/1923, Uman, Cherkasy Region, Ukrainian SSR) – clerical worker.
After completing 8 years of education at a Jewish school in 1940, Khanna Bliznyanskaya moved to Moscow to live with her father's sister. There, she worked as an insurance agent at the Stalin Factory while continuing her studies at the factory’s evening school. With the onset of the war, she was evacuated with her aunt's family to Kyzylorda, where she worked as a seamstress in an artel until 1945. Later, she located her father, who was then working in Tkvarcheli, and joined him there, working as a personnel department secretary at Mine No. 1 until May 1946.
In June 1946, Khanna Bliznyanskaya returned to Riga with her husband. From 1950 to 1951, she worked as a controller at a fuel depot for the Riga District Housing and Utilities Authority. In March 1960, she began training as a women's hairdresser at the Hairdressing Services Office (later reorganised in 1968 into the municipal enterprise Laimdota), where she worked until August 1973. She resigned due to health reasons and then worked as a cleaner at the Vilnis industrial association until October 1974. From 1974 to 1977, she returned to work as a women’s hairdresser at Laimdota. In 1977, Khanna and her husband moved to West Berlin. That same year, she applied for permission to emigrate to Israel for permanent residence.
In 1945 (or 1946), Khanna married Izaak Moiseyevich Bliznyansky. They had two children. Their daughter Lea Izaakovna Beyzer-Popova (née Bliznyanskaya) (1946 – (date unknown)) – lived in Moscow until 1974, working as a women’s hairdresser. In 1974, she emigrated to Israel, and in 1976 moved to West Berlin. Their son Moisey Izaakovich Bliznyansky (1953, Riga – 1964, Jūrmala) – drowned in the Lielupe River.
Father: Zelman Bentsionovich Roitman (1896, Uman – 1976, Jūrmala) – worked in a kolkhoz before the war; later was mobilised into the Soviet Army and reassigned to the labour army, where he worked as a tunneller in the Georgian SSR until 1946. He later moved to Riga and worked at Utsyrie station in Dubulty.
Mother: Liza Shlyomovna Roitman (née Shersher) (1896, Uman – August 1941, Uman).
Sisters:
Manya Zelmanovna Roitman (1925, Uman – August 1941, Uman)
Sara Zelmanovna Roitman (1927, Uman – August 1941, Uman)
Nekhama Zelmanovna Roitman (1936, Uman – August 1941, Uman)
Her mother and sisters were killed during the Nazi occupation.