Alexander Kann with his friends

Alexander Kann with his friends

This is my father Alexander Kann with his friends, members of the Jewish student organization Limuvia at Tartu University. My father is the first to the right sitting. The picture was taken in Tallinn in 1930.

Father was born in 1909. His sister Nata was three years older. Grandfather had his own house on 20 Kalvi Street in Tartu. It is still there. Now the firefighters are based there. All Tartu inhabitants knew the house of the Kanns. It was always open for people who needed shelter and food. Poor students of Tartu University often lived in Grandfather’s house. Of course, they felt like friends of the family. They did not pay anything for the accommodation.

Nata and my father studied in the Russian lyceum in Tartu. Having finished the lyceum, my father entered the Legal Department of Tartu University. Father was always a very sociable and charming man. He enchanted people. There were a lot of young people in his house – friends and pals of Nata and my father. Father joined the Jewish student organization Limuvia at Tartu University. There were two Jewish male student organizations: Khasmonea and Limuvia. Khasmonea was stricter, more Zionist. Limuvia was famous for fun. It mostly attracted students from well-off families. Every organization had its own coat of arms, statute and even uniform. The members of the organization always put the badge with the coat of arms on their uniforms.

In the early 1930s Nata left for Paris, France. There she met a young man, an immigrant from Russia called Sergey and married him. Nata and her husband had a traditional Jewish wedding. My grandparents and father went there. At that time Father was a student. He met my mom in Paris at the wedding party of his elder sister.
 

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