Esther Brodowski and her husband Max Brodowski

These are my parents: my mama Esther Brodowski and my father Max Brodowski. They were photographed after their wedding before departure to Berlin where my father was to take practice upon graduation from the Vienna University. The photo was taken in Valga in the early 1920s. After finishing the gymnasium my father went to Vienna and entered the Medical Faculty of the Vienna University. After finishing his studies my father returned to Tallinn. To obtain his diploma, he had to work in a clinic for six months. My father married Mama in 1923, and they moved to Berlin, where my father worked as an internship doctor in a clinic in Berlin. My father specialized in general medicine and skin and venereal diseases. After finishing his internship practice my father returned to Estonia, but his Austrian diploma was not sufficient to be allowed to work in Estonia. My father had to take exams to prove his diploma at the Medical Faculty in Tartu University, and he passed them successfully. This was when my father could go and work as a doctor. My mother Esther entered the Dental Faculty of Tartu University after finishing the gymnasium, but she never finished it. When my parents got married, my father told my mother that one dentist in the family was enough, and a married woman should take the responsibility for her children and the house. Mama quit her studies when she was a 2nd-year student. She was a housewife. My parents had a traditional Jewish wedding. Both families were religious, and all of my mother's and father's brothers and sisters had Jewish weddings. My mother and father stayed in Berlin for six months while my father had practice in a clinic there before they moved back to Valga. They rented an apartment. It was a big apartment, and my father also established his office where he received patients. I remember that my father never allowed my sister or me to enter his office. He was a very tidy person, and he suffered even when a pencil on his desk happened to be in the place. Nobody, but Mama, was allowed to clean his office.