Albert Lember and Leida Mikupõld from Estonia

I found these two wedding photographs of the same couple in an antique store in Estonia last summer. The couple in the photographs are identified as Albert Lember and Leida Mikupõld, and their wedding took place on May 29, 1939.

I was able to find the couple on Geni.com, which allowed me to begin piecing together at least some of their story. I may also have an idea about how these wedding photographs eventually ended up in a box of lost family photos in an antique store. So because the story of this couple unfolded during one of the most horrific periods in Estonian history, I wanted to share what I have been able to find.

Albert Lember was born on February 26, 1908, in Kõljala, on the Estonian island of Saaremaa. Leida Elisabeth Mikfeldt, whose surname was later Estonianised as Mikupõld, was born on January 15, 1912, in Aaspere, Estonia. The two were indeed married in May 1939 in Kadrina, Estonia.

Their daughter, Milvi Lember, was born in February 1941, in the middle of World War II.

I do not know for certain what happened to the Lember family during the war. But I know that Albert and Leida's marriage sadly did not survive the war. According to the obituary of their daughter, Milvi Wilson, née Lember, her father Albert was killed during World War II, while her mother and she were captured and held in a concentration camp until they eventually escaped to Germany.

Estonia has compiled detailed directories documenting the victims of Soviet crimes. I have not been able to find their names in any of these memorial books, so I have not yet been able to learn more about what happened to the family during this time or how and when Albert may have died. Albert had lost his own father, Jüri Lember, early in life. Jüri died during World War I in 1915, when Albert was just seven years old. And now, years later, Albert's own daughter would never have the chance to truly know her father.

I find Leida and her daughter in the records of the Displaced Persons camp in Erlangen, Germany, in 1948. In her D.P. application, Leida was listed as a widow. She noted that between November 1944 and May 1945, she and Milvi had been in Saaz, in the Sudetenland, in what is now the Czech Republic, where Leida worked as a cook. Afterwards, Leida and Milvi arrived at the D.P. camp in Rebdorf and subsequently moved to Erlangen, where Leida continued working in the kitchen as a cook. The file on her with the Arolsen Archives includes several passport photos of her as well:

In her application, she also made it very clear that she did not wish to return to her home country for political and religious reasons. Instead, she requested to be expatriated to Canada or another country in the Western world.

In August 1949, while still at the camp, she married a fellow displaced person from Estonia, the musician Paul Kuimet.

I do not know how long Leida and Paul's marriage lasted or where the couple lived after the D.P. camps were dissolved in the 1950s. Milvi's obituary, published in 2019, mentions her stepfather, Ivan Malyk, rather than Paul Kuimet. But I have not been able to find out who Ivan Malyk was, or when and where Leida met and married him.

I also have no information about whether Leida remained in Germany, was eventually able to emigrate to another country, or perhaps even returned to Estonia. After around 1950, the trail simply disappears.

Albert and Leida's daughter, Milvi Lember, eventually met her American husband in Germany in 1968. He was serving with the U.S. Navy in Europe at the time, and after his military service in Germany ended, the couple settled in Huber Heights, Ohio, in the United States. Milvi passed away in July 2019 and her obituary includes her photo:

Milvi's obituary also mentions Leida's granddaughter, Christina S. Wilson-Turley. I hope that one day I might be able to make contact with her and perhaps return these photographs to the family.

So there are still many loose ends. It is a complex story, but sadly, it is far from an exceptional one. My own great-grandparents also escaped Estonia during World War II and eventually ended up in a displaced persons camp in Germany, for many of the same reasons as Leida. Like her, they did not wish to return to their home country as long as it remained under Soviet rule.

Perhaps that is also why this particular story stayed with me. Looking at these two wedding photographs, taken in May 1939, it is difficult not to think about everything that was still ahead of Albert and Leida. A young couple, newly married, with no way of knowing how dramatically their lives—and their country—were about to change.

I wish I knew what happened to Leida after the early 1950s. Did she remain in Germany? Did she ever return to Estonia? Where was she buried, and who buried her? And what happened to the photographs of her wedding day that somehow, decades later, ended up in a box in an antique store?

I also find myself wondering who the guests at their 1939 wedding were. Perhaps one of the older women in the front row was Albert's widowed mother, Marie Lember, and one of the young men could have been Albert's older brother, Viktor Johannes.

I do not know whether Leida's parents, Hans and Leena Mikupõld, were still alive in 1939 and able to attend her wedding. Of her six sisters, three had already passed away by then. Perhaps her sisters Johanna Marie, Metha Helene, or Juuli Pauliine Mathiesen, née Mikfeldt, were among the wedding guests as well.

For now, those questions remain unanswered. Thank you for taking the time to read this story.