David Levin’s wife

This photo was taken in 1947, in Leningrad, before my wedding to Rebecca, just after her graduation from Leningrad State University (faculty of philology).

How did I meet my wife? It's weird and funny, but in late 1940s, some when like 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.