Geller (née Gilinova) Genesa Abramovna (10 June 1920, Daugavpils) – seamstress.
In 1932, the Geller family moved from Daugavpils to Liepāja, where Genesa completed the sixth year of primary school and, from 1933 to 1934, apprenticed with the local seamstress Firkser. Until 1940, she worked as a seamstress in the workshops of Novitsky and Schumacher in Liepāja, and from 1940 to 1941, she was employed in the Special Trade atelier.
In early 1941, Genesa married Lev Heller (b. 1914, Daugavpils). That same year, she was interned in the Liepāja Ghetto, where in 1943 her daughter, Sonia Geller (1942–1943), was murdered. After the liquidation of the ghetto in 1943, Genesa Geller was transferred to the Kaiserwald concentration camp and forced to work at the camp’s branch in Sofienwalde. After the camp was liberated, she performed agricultural labour in Germany until September 1945. In 1945, she returned to Latvia and, in 1946, moved from Daugavpils to Riga. During her imprisonment, Genesa Geller was separated from her husband; they were reunited only after the war. In 1960, she gave birth to a daughter, also named Sonia Geller, in memory of her murdered child.
From 1946 to 1948 and again from 1950 to 1953, Genesa Geller worked as a seamstress at the Riga artel Savienība, and from 1953 to 1960 at the artel Taupība.
The war claimed the lives of many of Geller’s loved ones: in 1941, her parents, brother, and sisters were murdered in Liepāja — Abram Gilinov (1887–1941), Khava Gilinova (1888–1941), Khaim Gilinov (1918–1941), Tsilya Gilinova (1923–1941), and Tsipa Gilinova (1925–1941).
In 1964, Genesa Geller received permission to emigrate from Latvia.
Family:
Lev Heller (b. 1914, Daugavpils) – husband
Sonia Heller (b. 1960) – daughter
Sonia Heller (1942, Liepāja – 1943, Riga) – daughter
Abram Gilinov (1887, Daugavpils – 1941, Liepāja) – father
Khava Gilinova (1888, Daugavpils – 1941, Liepāja) – mother
Khaim Gilinov (1918, Daugavpils – 1941, Liepāja) – brother
Tsilya Gilinova (1923, Daugavpils – 1941, Liepāja) – sister
Tsipa Gilinova (1925, Daugavpils – 1941, Liepāja) – sister