Eva Laanee-Reintamm and Alexandr Laane

These are my children: my daughter Eva and my son Alexandr. Alexandr is a schoolboy, and Eva is four on this photo. It was taken in Tallinn in 1976. I got married in 1967. Our older son Alexandr, named after my father, was born in 1968, and our daughter Eva was born in 1972. After my daughter was born I went to work as an editor in the scientific literature publishing house. This is where I still work. We are a team of associates, and I like it there. We can discuss any subject without having any concerns. I find it very important to trust my peers. I've never faced any anti-Semitism through the years of my work. It is true. It does not exist even now. Recently, the staff was reduced in our publishing house. Three editors have kept their jobs, and I'm one of them. If they wanted they could easily get rid of me, considering that I'm of pensioner's age. I remembered how my grandmother and grandfather were raising me. They never excluded me from their company or forbade me to do things. I remembered this, but living in the Soviet Union was different, and I raised my children differently. Of course, when we had guests, the children stayed at the table listening to our discussions, but I tried to keep my tongue in their presence. I did not allow them to express their opinion on political subjects: for God's sake, don't speak out before you start understanding things! One can only speak out having knowledge of the subject. However, my children are very nice children. They've been interested in the past and in the history of our families. They know about my family, and they spent much time with their paternal grandmother, they know everything about Valdo's family, about the life in exile, before and after the exile. They matured very fast. When it was time for them to receive their passports when they turned 16, we left it to their discretion to choose what nationality they wanted to have stated in their passports. And they chose it: my son is formally Estonian and my daughter is a Jew.