Beines Patov

Beines Patov

This is my brother Beines Patov. He gave me this photo before moving to Tallinn in 1940. I've kept it through all these years. This photo was taken in Rakvere in 1940.

My brother was born in 1923. He was very talented. Everything came easy to him. He had a beautiful baritone and he was very musical. He took singing classes. He was strong, tall and handsome. He was growing fast and couldn't wait till he could start working. He liked dealing with technical things. He always fixed bicycles, though nobody taught him to do it. After finishing the seventh grade, Beines left school. My mother was very disappointed. She had always wanted her children to get a good education, particularly considering that she never had a chance. However, my brother insisted on having his own way. At 17 he went to Tallinn where he became an apprentice car mechanic. My mother went with him to find him a place to stay. When my brother started working he went to an evening school.

Beines went to Leningrad on business before the war. He was to deliver a vehicle there. My mother was very worried, but she hoped Beines would take care of himself, and we couldn't stay any longer in Rakvere waiting for him. We packed a few things and went to the railway station. The trains were leaving, filled with people. The station was overcrowded. The crowd separated our family. My father and I failed to board the train whereas my mother and sister managed to get on. My father decided to go to Leningrad where his brother lived, but the train went past Leningrad. We stopped at a station in the suburb for a long while. There we met with my brother, who was on his way back to Tallinn. We told him to join us, but Beines said he had his orders and had to go back to Tallinn to report the completion of his task. This was the last time I saw my brother alive.

When he returned to town, German forces were close to the town. Beines was captured by Estonians. They executed him in the Tallinn jail. In 1962 I obtained a certificate of his death from the archives. It's strange that all the archives were kept, but this was only because of the Estonian love for order. According to this certificate and the documents of the central state archive, Beines Patov, a car mechanic, was arrested in Tallinn during the German occupation on 1st September 1941 for being Jewish. Based on this charge Patov was to be executed before 6th October 1941. When my husband and I were in Israel, we visited the Yad Vashem. I was given documents to fill out. I filled them out in Ashdod, Israel, and sent them to Yad Vashem. About a month after that, Yad Vashem sent me a letter saying that they had my brother's data.

Open this page