Liya Kaplan

This is me on my fifteenth birthday. The picture was taken in Tallinn in 1937. I was born in 1922. There were two Jewish schools in Tallinn, both in the same building. There were only private Jewish schools, there were no state ones. In one school, classes were in Ivrit and in the other one they were in Yiddish. Children from poor families studied there as well, on the charity programs. Such students were maintained by rich Jews. Students of both schools were on friendly terms, but we, the students of the Ivrit school always found a way to say that we were the true Jews, and they were Yiddishists. We were members of youth Zionist organizations at school. I was a member of Hashomer Hatzair, my friend joined Betar. There was no animosity among us.