My Love – Bluma Yelkanovich
Bluma was born in 1919 in Belarus
I was 17 when I met my future husband Samuel who was 27.
The year was 1936 and we both lived in Shklov, Mogilev Uezd, Belarus. During the Civil War in Russia, Samuel was a partisan.
Being my brother’s friend, Samuel frequently came to visit him at our home.
Then he started bringing flowers and sweets for me. My parents saw a change in his attitude and quickly held a family meeting to discuss our future.
They decided that the best option was to get married soon.
“What’s the point of schlepping* around?” they said shrugging their shoulders.
We got married in my parents’ flat and then moved to Samuel’s parents’ home.
I gave birth to our daughter Roza, and then World War II began. Samuel never returned from the battlefield…
It was hard to become a widow and a single mum at such a young age but what could I do? There were widows and orphans everywhere…
Later on I remarried and had another daughter Lyalya.
* Schlepping is a Yiddish word that means “moving slowly in a clumsy manner”
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