Here I am with mother and father, when I was, probably, one and a half years old. Mother got acquainted with Dad during a students' practice in Kronstadt and they got married in 1928. Before me mother had two children, the first baby was born dead, and the second girl died in the age of six months, only I remained.
My Daddy Samuil Berkovich Levit was born in Simferopol in 1904. Their family was also rather rich - they owned a house, I think in Kanatnaya Street. As a boy Daddy, it seems, went to Cheder, but I do not know for sure. Then he studied in a vocational school, in the commercial department. In 1929 Daddy graduated from the Institute of Civil Engineers in Leningrad and was assigned to Murmansk, the city under construction then. Daddy was one of the first builders and designers of that city. But Mum fell ill with tuberculosis there, and they had to return to Leningrad. Mum got acquainted with Daddy during the students' practical training session in Kronstadt and they got married in 1928. Parents didn't tell me anything about their wedding, I don't even have any photos of this event. Maybe there weren't any wedding at all, they could have just register their marriage with state bodies or live in civil marriage.
My mother Àida Leibovna Levit (nee Golshmid) was born in 1906 in St.Petersburg. Before revolution, in lower classes, she studied in the well-known female Stayuninskaya grammar school. She was telling me about that grammar school with delight, that there was good order and, by the way, no anti-Semitism ever existed. One of the subjects was the Law of God, and the Jews were allowed to skip those lessons. And in general there was no anti-Semitism in the attitudes of people with whom my grandmother and grandfather communicated. Anti-Semitism in their circle in general was considered a shame. A person who showed any sign of anti-Semitism, was simply announced a boycott. After the revolution, in 1924, Mum finished a school in Petrograd that was located in the building of the former 1-st grammar school for boys in Kabinetskaya Street (now Pravdy Street).
I, Lyudmila Samuilovna Matsina (before marriage - Levit), was born on December 24, 1932 in Leningrad. My parents lived in the 2-nd Sovetskaya Street then, where as early as in 1924 the family of my grandmother and her sister Vera with children settled. The times, certainly, were difficult, but I, beeing a child, certainly didn't feel it, as I was a sole child who survived (before me Mum had two babies, the first was born dead, and the second girl died at the age of six months). Everyone was nursing me, and you could tell everything was done for me. Grandmother was staying at home, and there was a housemaid, too.
