Ida Kristina and Iosif Zalevski

This is a picture of me and my second husband Iosif Zalevski, photographed after our wedding in Chernigov, 1947. We had Jewish neighbors: Manya Belmont and her husband, who lived in the same street as us. Once Manya came to our house and said that she wanted me to meet her son, who had returned from hospital. They came to see us that evening and I met my second husband, Iosif Zalevski. After finishing a higher secondary school Iosif worked as a mechanic in the port. He was recruited to the army in 1939. In 1944 he managed to escape. I liked Iosif. I cannot say that I fell in love with Iosif like I had with Boris, my first husband. I felt sorry for Iosif. I saw that he loved me very much and I agreed to marry him. Of course, there was no such passion as in my first marriage, but I never regretted marrying him. We got married in 1947. We had a small wedding dinner with our relatives. Iosif was a very ill man. He had trauma epilepsy and I often called an ambulance at night, but they were helpless. My husband was an invalid. He couldn't go to work and thought he was a burden on me. My husband decided to go to Kiev where doctors offered a surgery that might either improve his condition or be lethal in the worst case. He didn't want to continue living with his problems and decided for the surgery. Fortunately, the surgery was a success. The doctors removed the bone splinters, but they couldn't reach the steel splinters in his head. Iosif was acknowledged as a war invalid and had some privileges. He stayed in Kiev for a long term of rehabilitation. Only 13 years after we got married his condition improved significantly. While he was in Kiev Iosif finished Construction College and entered the Leningrad Water Transport Institute by correspondence, but he couldn't study there due to his illness. Iosif was the director of a hostel and then worked at a shop. I always tried to take good care of him. I was eager to have a baby, but doctors told me that my husband's trauma epilepsy could have an impact on the baby and so we didn't have children.