Biography
Pensioner Yelena Savelieva, a teacher with forty years of experience, found herself under criminal prosecution for reading and discussing the Bible, thanks to which she found meaning in life.
Yelena was born in July 1941 in the village of Katka (Republic of Belarus) at the height of World War II. The settlement was beautiful and well-groomed, therefore, having occupied it, the German troops tripled their headquarters there. The first years of Yelena's life were spent in poverty, hunger and fear.
The girl grew up separately from her parents, she was raised by her grandmother. Having moved to Russia and having lived for three years in the city of Chernyakhovsk (Kaliningrad region), in 1950, the grandmother sent Yelena to her mother, being unable to provide her granddaughter financially. Yelena's stepfather was a cruel person, so life was very difficult for her. At the age of 15, she left her parents' home for the city of Sovetsk, Kaliningrad Region, where she studied at the school of projectionists.
In the spring of 1960, Yelena, at the insistent request of her parents, who at that time lived in the Kemerovo region, came to them. But later that year, she moved to the city of Tomsk, where she decided to settle down and continue her education. Yelena graduated from the railway technical school, graduated from high school as an external student and entered the Tomsk Pedagogical Institute at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics. After graduation, she devoted more than 40 years to teaching.
In 1963, Yelena married the nuclear physicist Leonid, with whom they had been married for 55 years until his death in 2018. Together, the couple raised two sons.
In her youth, Yelena had a strong desire for the spiritual. In her prayers, she often asked God: “Why do I live? What can I do for you?". Later, after meeting Jehovah's Witnesses and starting to read the Bible, Yelena received answers to her questions. In 2002, she made the decision to embark on the Christian path.
The criminal prosecution did not change her attitude towards others, including her ill-wishers. “When I get to know new people, I start to love them with all my heart,” says Yelena.