Boris Rokhlin

Boris Rokhlin

This is my father's younger brother Boris Rokhlin. This photo was taken in Tallinn in 1922.

After getting married my grandmother was a housewife. It was only my grandfather that was the breadwinner. They had three children. My father, Jacob Rokhlin, born in 1910, was the oldest. Jacob was the name written in his documents, but for some reason, my father was called Max all his life. I have no idea, why. Even when my father died and his acquaintances read about it in the obituary section of the newspaper, they thought that the newspaper had just confused the names. My father’s sister Miriam was born in 1913, and Boris was born in 1915.

Their family was rather well-off. The children finished a gymnasium in Tallinn and continued their education. My father’s sister Miriam studied piano and music at the Conservatory in Tallinn. My father and his younger brother Boris studied at Tartu University. My father entered the Department of Dentistry, and his brother Boris studied law.

Boris lived in Tallinn after he graduated from Tartu University. He was a lawyer. Boris also had a non-Jewish wife like my father. His wife Maria was half-Russian and half-Estonian. However, they made a very good couple. Boris’s wife finished Art School in Tartu. She was an artist. She was pregnant twice, but both times things didn’t work out for them, and she never got pregnant again. They had no children.

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