Tag #119655 - Interview #78219 (Bluma Lepiku)

My mother's friend, whose husband hadn't returned from the front yet, gave us shelter. My father addressed the court to have our apartment back. However, it turned out that there was no way we could force the janitor to move out. He presented the form stating that his son was in the Red Army to the court. As it turned out afterward this form was falsified, but we only found this out many years later. Well, at that point of time we were homeless. After numerous visits to the executive committee [17] and the Central Committee of the Party Mama obtained an authorization for us to move into two rooms in a shared apartment. We lived there a few years. Our co-tenants in this apartment were three other families. We had never resided in a shared apartment before and had to get used to the new way of living.

After the war my mother's sister Fanny found us. She lived in the USA with her family. She was so happy to learn that we survived! We had hardly any luggage, when we arrived in Tallinn. Mama only retained one decent outfit for each of us, so that we had a pair of shoes and a dress each to dress properly to go out. She didn't want people to say that we were a bunch of ragamuffins having come back from Russia. The rest of our clothing was sold or traded for food products. Actually, this was all we had at all. Our apartment and whatever belongings we had left therein were gone. Aunt Fanny started sending us parcels. She sent us sufficient clothes to dress for any occasion. We corresponded until my father was told that this was not safe [18] and our communication faded.