Marcus Kaplan

This is my husband Marcus Kaplan. He gave me this picture when we decided to get married. It was taken in Tallinn in 1940. I met my husband-to-be, Marcus Kaplan, in the last but one grade at school. I went to see my relatives in Tartu. Whilst there I met a Jewish girl named Berta, who had graduated from the Estonian Philology Department of Tartu University and taught Estonian at Tartu Jewish school. Berta and I had a frank conversation and it wasn?t long before we both felt like we had been friends for ages. Berta suggested showing me Tartu. On our way we called on her brother Marcus, who owned a small store downtown. Berta introduced me to him and said that we were on the way to a café and asked if he?d join us, if he?d like to. Berta and I went to a café and after a couple of minutes Marcus came in. We spent some time together and then Berta tactfully left, leaving Marcus and I to spend the whole day together. We started seeing each other after that. Marcus came to Tallinn, and I made trips to Tartu. Both of my parents liked Marcus and things were evolving, so I was to marry him after leaving school. Marcus was born in Tartu in 1912. His parents were no longer alive. His sister Berta and brother Abram lived in Tartu. His other brother and sister lived in Kazan, in the USSR. They left there before the revolution to study, but then they couldn't come back. The war was unleashed on 22nd June 1941. We were on the verge of staying in Estonia, but fortunately my elder brother Samuel insisted on our evacuation. We left on 9th July 1941. The five of us went: my parents, my brother Rudolf, my sister Vera and I. I was really worried about Marcus and his family. I didn't know if they had managed to leave Tartu. There was no news from them. The only thing I knew was that his siblings lived in Kazan. My father and I decided to go there to find out about Marcus. We took some things with us to sell and get tickets. It was really amazing for us to get the ticket to Kazan. We had been looking for Marcus's relatives all day long, but to no avail. We came back to the station, and stopped on the platform by the train. Suddenly a man jumped out of the train and took my hand. It was Marcus! He had come to Kazan with his sister to look for his relatives. It turned out that they were in evacuation not far from us, in Chuvashiya, but we bumped into each other in Russia.