This is the family of my mother's sister Rebecca. From to left to right: Rebecca's husband Semyon Kremer, son Alexander, daughter Margalit and aunt Rebecca. The picture was taken in Tallinn in 1940.
My grandparents had four children. All of them were born in Tartu. Mother’s elder brother was Rolli. The second child was her sister Rebecca. My mother Paulina was born in 1895. Her younger brother David was two or three years younger than she. Grandfather took the education of his children serious. There was the famous Russian Pushkinskaya lyceum in Tartu. All their children finished it and then entered Tartu University.
Aunt Rebecca graduated from university. She became a dentist, but she did not work after graduation. When she studied at the university, she met a Jew called Semyon Kremer and married him upon graduation. Semyon was a gynecologist. Rebecca gave birth to two children. Her elder son Alexander was born in 1921 and three years older than me, and her daughter Margalit was born in 1931.
My relatives who were in evacuation during the war returned to Tallinn. Aunt Ester with her daughters and Mother’s sister Rebecca and her family came back. During the war they were in evacuation in Ural, and Grandmother Vera was with them. Apart from Uncle David, my cousin Alexander did not come back. He was drafted into the army during the first days of the war. Then, when Estonians were demobilized from the army as per Stalin’s order, Alexander, along with many Estonian guys, was sent to a labor army in Siberia. Then many of those Estonians joined the Estonian Corps. Alexander died of typhus in the camp before the Estonian corps was established.
