Anatoli Kraemer with his wife Mayli Kraemer

Here you can see my wife Mayli and me celebrating my 60th birthday in the assembly hall of  Eta, where I was working. My colleagues organized a real party for me with presents, greetings, poems, party and dances. There is my portrait on the wall, a present from my colleagues. The photograph was taken in Tallinn in 1984.

In 1960 I was offered a job in Tallinn to run municipal culture palace. There was a lot of work. I wanted to make our culture palace into a place that people would enjoy to visit in the evening and on days off. I wanted it to be a center of culture and recreation. We established several vocal and dancing groups. There was a very good ladies’ vocal group called Elektra, which was also famous outside Estonia. Our symphonic orchestra had tours overseas with that group. It was the time when it was hard for USSR citizens to go abroad even as tourists, but we went there on concert tours as participants of festivals and contests.

Then I was offered a job as editor of the photo department of the news agency Eta, which provided materials for almost all printed editions of the Baltic countries. Eta was actually a political organization. We had to adjust all news from the different parts of the world for the Soviet press and of course make a certain coloring. Soon I was assigned chief editor of the photo department. When I was working in Eta, I was compelled to go through training in the Higher party school. I retired in 1994.

My wife Mayli worked in the kindergarten, then she was offered a job in a seamstress vocational school. She worked there for a long time. Her teacher’s salary was skimpy, and she had to think of her pension. Mayli went to work as person in charge of the warehouse at the milk factory. She worked there for ten years and retired in 1988. When Estonia became independent, life was getting difficult. There was not enough money and Mayli started working as a librarian at school. She stopped working in 1998.