Poverman (Powermann) (née Shapiro) Gertruda Yakovlevna (August 22, 1900, Białystok — 1978) — music teacher.
After graduating from secondary school in Białystok in 1918, Gertruda Poverman completed two years at the Faculty of Law of the Jagiellonian University (Kraków, Poland). Together with the family of her father, Yakov Shapiro (1871–1944), she emigrated to the United States in 1920. Until 1934, she gave private music lessons.
In 1928, in the United States, she met her cousin Ilya Poverman (1899). A Soviet citizen and engineer, he had been sent to New York as part of the staff of the Soviet trade mission Amtorg. In 1929, their marriage was officially registered. In 1931, their son Evgeny was born. One month after the birth of their son, her husband was recalled to the Soviet Union, and she remained in the United States.
In 1934, in New York, after receiving notification from the Consulate General of the USSR, she accepted Soviet citizenship, and in 1935, together with her son Evgeny, moved to join her husband in Leningrad. From 1936 to 1939 she studied at the Leningrad Institute of Foreign Languages, and in 1940 completed correspondence courses in a foreign language.
In 1941, she and her son were evacuated to Siberia, where she worked as a medical inspector in Novosibirsk. In 1944, she returned to Leningrad and until 1946 worked as a translator and assistant at a scientific research sanitary-chemical institute. In 1945, her husband was sent to the Soviet occupation zone of Germany, and in 1946 she spent several months in Germany.
In 1947, her husband was transferred to Riga (Teploelektroproekt). In 1958, after retiring, she moved to Riga to live with her husband. Her son remained in Leningrad. She died in 1978; her ashes were transported and buried in Leningrad.
Her brother and sister, Lazar Shapiro (1904) and Liya Solnet (née Shapiro) (1905), had lived in the United States since the 1920s.
Family:
Ilya Poverman (1899) — husband
Evgeny Poverman (1931) — son
Yakov Shapiro (1871–1944) — father
Sarra Shapiro (1880–1970) — mother
Lazar Shapiro (1904) — brother
Liya Solnet (née Shapiro) (1905) — sister