Tag #152497 - Interview #97160 (Esphir Kalantyrskaya)

My father didn’t change his bachelor’s way of life: he met with friends, went to restaurants and played in the amateur theater. In this theater he met a young Jewish girl Sophia Kazakova.  They were of different age: my father was 43 and she was 18. They fell in love with each other and my father left the house. I don’t know what a divorce was like in those years, but I believe they had to obtain rabbi’s permission. It couldn’t have been otherwise. In 1918 right after my younger brother was born my father divorced my mother and married Sophia.  It was a big scandal in the town. People discussed this divorce and Sophia’s conduct everywhere: at the market, in stores and at the synagogue.  My father left the house and everything in it to my mother and gave her money at the beginning.  My mother had a very hard time: she didn’t leave the house, didn’t even go to the synagogue and hardly paid any attention to us, children.