Zinaida Alperovich with her husband, sister and her husband’s friend

This photo was taken in the middle of 1920s in Bologoye.

Here you see my mother Anna Alperovitch, and my Dad Matvey, her sister who is my aunt Maria, and father's friend. His name is unknown. I don't know on which occasion they took this studio photo.

My parents got to know each other in the beginning of 1920s. That was the Civil War. My father was in army, he served in a sanitary company. Their sanitary train went to Staraya Russa; father went for a walk, found the place, where they sold the kvass, and came inside the house.

Mother washed the floors; she interrupted the work, washed her hands and gave him some kvass. So they met, and began to talk. Then, together with his unit, he left, but they continued to write each other.

And, after he demobilized from army, mother went to Belarus, to that village, called Lipsk. There they registered their relations in 1922, but the large Jewish wedding happened in Staraya Russa later, some when in 1923, even after my birth.

Probably, they didn't organize the wedding in Belarus, because they didn't have money to afford it. And my maternal parents were richer than paternal ones, and maybe mother asked her parents to help her with a big holiday.

The point is that after my birth my mother decided to go back at home to Staraya Russa to stay with her parents: she was bored in Lipsk because she was from a town, wore town clothes and, apparently, was a coquette, and Lipsk happened to be small peasant village, where nothing was going on.

Then father came to Staraya Russa too. I suppose, it could be late 1923 or something like that.