Yelena Leger

My wife Yelena Leger. I asked her to have this photo taken for our family album. This photo was taken in Mogilyov-Podolskiy in 1969.

In 1958 I went to work at the design office at the machine building plant named after Kirov in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. This is the biggest plant in the town. I still work there, even though I’ve stepped over the retirement age. I met my future wife Yelena Kravets at the plant. She was a copy operator at the design office. Yelena was born in Yampol town Vinnitsa region in 1937. Her Jewish name is Leya. Her father Borukh Kravets went to the front during the Great Patriotic War. Yelena's mother Klara Kravets decided it was dangerous to stay in Yampol and decided to go to Mogilyov-Podolskiy, where her mother and sister lived and took her daughter with her. They only reached Chernivtsy, when Germans already occupied it. In occupation they stayed in Chernivtsy. A Jewish family gave shelter to them. Yelena remembers no details, she was too small then. Chernivtsy was liberated one day before Mogilyov-Podolskiy, 18 March 1943. On 19 March Yelena's mother perished during an air raid. Yelena was 5 years old, and some people took Yelena to their family. She stayed with them till her grandmother and her grandmother's sister returned from evacuation. Yelena's father perished at the front in 1944. Yelena lived with her grandmother in Mogilyov-Podolskiy. After finishing school she went to work as a copy operator at the plant. We got married in 1962. We had a civil ceremony in the registry office, and in the evening mama arranged a dinner for the family. We lived with my parents. My father installed a partial in the room and we lived there for few years. In 1965 the plant constructed an apartment house for its employees and my wife and I received a two-bedroom apartment. In 1965 our daughter was born. We named her Klara after Yelena's mother. Yelena entered the extramural school of librarians in Soroki town in Moldavia. After finishing this school Yelena organized a technical library at the plant. She started from just one bookcase of books and in few years their number grew into few thousand books. Yelena became director of this library and worked there till she retired.