The Son with Two Mothers: A Soviet Story

A woman in front of the flag of the Uzbek SSR -- Crop from a Soviet poster 1980

A remarkable true story from the Soviet press in 1983 of how an Estonian mother came to be reunited with her long lost son with whom she had become separated after a Nazi bombing during the war. He had suffered from memory loss due to a concussion and had been raised by a family in the Uzbek SSR who adopted him and treated him as their own. Finally, over forty years later, they met again as she never, in all those years, gave up her search.

Text:

The war separated a mother and her son. In the summer of 1941, Leontina Lauk, an Estonian woman, was caught in a fascist air-raid. She managed to find her younger children, but her eldest, ten-year old Leonhard, remained missing.

She continued to search for him long after the war had ended, but to no avail. However, she wrote letter after letter to the Red Cross, the newspapers, the radio, asking them to help her find her son. Her letter was published in a newspaper in the Uzbek SSR. During the war years, tens of thousands of children, evacuees from the western parts of the country, found shelter in this republic. Uzbek families adopted many orphans.

The Umidov family, which lives in a kishlak not far from Bukhara, read her letter. The eldest son in the family knew he was adopted. During the war the boy had lost his memory through concussion and was unable to remember anything about himself. When the train arrived at the station near Bukhara the Uzbek family took in the fair-haired boy and brought him up. Umid and Muyassar, the boy's adopted parents, called him Leonid and gave him their surname. And now, as a grown man who was deeply touched by the grief of the old Estonian woman, he replied to her letter and sent his photograph, saying: "If you really are my mother I shall be overjoyed. If not, let my fate be a comfort to you. Perhaps your son was brought up by good people as I was".

Leontina Lauk recognized her son immediately on opening the letter. He and his father were as like as two peas in a pod. And it later turned out that her son still bore the scar on his leg from a cut he had received in childhood.

Mother and son were reunited after a separation of some forty years. Their meeting was joyous and touching. This is how Uzbek cotton-grower, Leonid Umidov found out that he was really Leonhard Lauk from Estonia. He now has two mothers Muyassar-apa, an Uzbek and Leontina, an Estonian. And both are his real mothers.

From the newspapers '’Sovetskaya Bukhara", Bukhara, Uzbek SSR,- “Sovetskaya Estonia“, Tallin, Estonian SSR, “Komsomolskaya pravda", Moscow, 1983