Naum Balan and Lidia Lieberman

This is me, in the center, and my future second wife Lidia Lieberman, on the right, and her friend Katia. This photo was taken in Odessa in 1950, on Primorski Boulevard near the colonnade of Vorontsov Palace. Lidia came to Odessa from Kherson region where she worked after finishing a medical school in Odessa. After finishing school in 1946 I entered the Electrotechnical Faculty of Odessa Communications College. I had friends in college and also visited my father's acquaintance and companion Reznik. His daughter Rita introduced me to Lidia Lieberman, a student of medical school, who was to become my wife many years later. In 1975 my first wife Elena Mazdorova and I divorced. In 1981 my acquaintances reminded me about Lidia Lieberman that used to be a friend of mine in Odessa. By that time she had also divorced her husband. Lidia lived in Odessa and worked as a lab assistant in the pathologoanatomic department of the regional hospital. I wrote her a letter and then went to see her. We resumed our relationships. Lidia came to see me in Soroki and I often visited her in Odessa. Lidia and I decided to live together in 1995. I moved to Odessa. I had to have my documents changed. Moldavian officials were helpful and so were officials in Odessa, especially when I told them that I came from Odessa. Lidia lived in a communal apartment in the center of the town. After her aunt died she inherited a one-bedroom apartment in Cheryomushki [a new district in Odessa]. We exchanged these two apartments and settled down in a new two-bedroom apartment with a balcony and all comforts in a new district of the town.