Emma Goldman's Orthodox Jewish family lived in the Lithuanian city of Kaunas (called Kovno at the time, part of the Russian Empire).[4] Goldman's mother Taube Bienowitch had been married before, to a man with whom she had two daughters—Helena in 1860 and Lena in 1862. When her first husband died of tuberculosis, Taube was devastated. Goldman later wrote: "Whatever love she had had died with the young man to whom she had been married at the age of fifteen."[5]