Raisa Ryklina was born 1923 in Slutsk, Belarus. She lived with her mother, Taiba Mandel, her father, Mendel Mandel, and her youngest brother, Lev Ryklina. During the war, her family went into hiding in Slutsk and the surrounding area while it was under German occupation from June 25, 1941 until March 1942. Raisa and her family hid from July 1941 to January 1942 in a neighbor’s house, moving in January 1942 until March 1942 to her ‘grandfather’s home’ in the village of Urechye. In April 1942, Raisa and her family joined a partisan detachment taking part in fighting the Germans and local police. Her mother, Taiba Mandel, was killed in April 1944 during a German blockade. Her brother, Lev Mandel, joined the Red Army in July 1944 until May 1945, when he was killed one day prior to the end of the war. 39 members of Raisa and her husband’s family were killed during the war. After the war Raisa attended the Moscow Teacher’s institute from 1945 to 1949. She worked as a school Principal in the small city of Kola in the Murmansk Oblast region of Russia with her husband, Efimryklin from 1950 to 1963. She moved to Minsk, Belarus in 1963 where she was a School Deputy Principal and history teacher. Raisa immigrated to the Chicago in 1992.