Manya Belmont with friends

This is my second husband's mother Manya Zalevskaya (in the middle) pregnant with my future husband, Iosif Zalevski. Manya changed her last name to Belman after the marriage to her second husband. The rest of the people on the picture are unknown. The photo was taken in Chernigov in the 1910s. 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. Iosif was born to a Jewish family in Chernigov in 1919. His father died in the early 1920s. His mother came from Novie Mliny, Chernigov province. She didn't have any education. They had a hard life. His mother took various jobs; she sold ice cream, sewed and did laundry until she got married for the second time. After finishing a higher secondary school Iosif worked as a mechanic in the port. He was recruited to the army in 1939. 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. Manya Zalevskaya died in the early 1950s, we buried her in the town cemetery.