David Levin together with his wife and daughter

This photo was taken in 1954, in Daugavpils. Here you can see my wife Rebecca, our daughter Elena and me.

It was taken in Daugavplis, in this Latvian town, because my wife worked there, and my daughter lived there too with her. My wife couldn't find any other job after she graduated from the philological faculty of Leningrad State University and post graduate course in linguistics too, so she had to go to Latvia, for that was the only place she could find, because the 'fight against cosmopolitans' started already. So every two months I had to go to Daugavpils.

How did I meet my wife? It's weird and funny, but in 1949, I went for the dancing evening at the House of Teachers, later they called this place 'House of brides'. And there I met my future wife. It's very funny because I visited dancing evenings only two or three times in whole my life, so it was just an occasion, an accident.

So we met each other, and that meeting ended with the fact that we live together for more than fifty four years. We registered our relations in September of 1949, that event took place on September, the 29th of 1949. There was no Jewish wedding, and there was no wedding at all, because we didn't have such opportunity. My parents had only a small room.

I know a lot about my wife and her parents. I know well the history of her family: her father was Jewish dressmaker from Bologoye [town in 300 kilometers to the South from Petersburg], Isaac Alpert, and her mother was a housewife, born in wealthy family of hat-maker Abram Linov.

They both were Jews, her father spoke mainly Yiddish and even observed Sabbaths, and they both celebrated Jewish holidays. When I've got to know my wife, her parents lived in Moscow, because after the World War II they decided to go there to stay and care of their elder son Eizer, who was injured on the front and lost his foot.

What to us with Rebecca, we have daughter Elena, and she gave birth to son, called Sergey. Elena's husband was Russian, Vladimir Proskuryakov from peasant family; he was a scientist, exploring some fields of metallurgy. He died eight years ago in auto crash, and that was great grief for our daughter. They lived together over twenty five years. Now she is married for the second time.

Her son Sergey has two children too, and our grandchildren are called Pavel and Daria. When my daughter was born, we put the child's bed in the middle of our twenty four meters' rooms in that shared apartment, where we lived. Still, those were good times, because it was the very beginning of our family life and our daughter made her first steps.

Then my wife had to move to Latvia, because she couldn't find any job here, in Leningrad, and she took our little girl with her. For me it was very hard not to see them for quite a while. Fortunately, later she could get a job here, so she came back and I was happy to live with them again.

Then we changed many places of living, because I was military person, and we had to move. But we never left Leningrad, which I like very much and consider my native city. In 1960s (in 1965 to be more exact), to my opinion and according to my wife's accounts, we finally moved to this apartment on Leninsky Avenue and nowadays live here for over than thirty eight years.

Our daughter grew up here, and she moved to her own apartment after she's got married in the middle of 1970s, being a student of metallurgical faculty. Later she's got the second high education: she graduated from Moscow Psychological University (she studied there, living here; she only had to go to Moscow once per half a year to pass exams).

Now she working as a psychologist in private kindergarten, but before she tried quite a few of jobs. She is very friendly person, helps to everyone, who needs her support. She takes care not only of her numerous friends, but also of her two dogs (she just took a little doggy, because that one, whom she took form the street, died) and her grandchildren, nice girl of five years and wonderful boy of three.