Zinaida Alperovich with her daughter Lilia Danilova

This photo was taken in 1940s, in Bologoye. Here you see my mother Zinaida Alperovitch and my younger sister Lilia.

Lilia (Lilia Matveevna Danilova) my little sister was born on February, the 19th of 1941. Mother wasn't very young woman, she was forty one, but dad wanted a boy.

So they decided to keep a child, when she's got pregnant. We grew up already and thought to leave, and they didn't wish to stay alone…

I remember why they called her Lilia. There was one Jewish family in Bologoye, parents and three daughters. And one of them, Lilia, was a real beauty, so I looked at her and went jealous. I

n her honor I named Lilia, my sister: she was black and I believed that she will be as beautiful. Lilia grew mainly in Dad's absence, without a father: she was four, when Dad came back from the front in 1945.

And then, while she studied in the ninth grade, father died. She was less lively than we were. Mother always said: 'Why Lilia is so sad?' And she asked us (me and Sophia): 'Why you are so beautiful, and I'm not like you?'

After Lilia came to Leningrad, finished the college, and got an order to Vladimir. And she met her husband, the ordinary Russian guy, on the dances. Thanks to God, they live forty years together. They have two children and grandchildren already too.

All of them immigrated to America; they live near Los-Angeles. First her elder daughter went to America; she's got married to a Jew from Odessa, called Vladimir. They are great friends, he makes good money, and Svetlana gave birth to two children.

Then Lilia, her husband and their younger daughter Elena together with her husband moved to California too. They left a year or two ago.

We keep in touch; my sister continues to write and calls often. I have good relations with both nephews too.