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In 1903, Grandmother Leah fell ill, she was treated in a hospital in Tallinn, but the doctors couldn’t help her and she died. She was buried in Tallinn at the Jewish cemetery. My father was only five years old then and my grandmother’s sister, Beile Chapkovski, adopted him. She didn’t have any children of her own and her family brought up my father as their own son. After his wife’s death, Grandfather Benyamin still lived in Rakvere with the rest of his children. The family was poor and my grandfather couldn’t pay for his children to be well-educated. Yiddish was the language spoken in that family.
My father’s eldest sister’s name was Anna. She studied in a Russian gymnasium in Rakvere and finished eight or nine grades. Anna married Faivel Migdal, who was a real estate agent. They lived in Tallinn and were well-off. Aunt Anna considered herself an urban lady: she never spoke Yiddish, mainly Russian. Their son’s name was Gedalye Migdal. He went to a German school, but in 1933 when the fascists came to power in Germany, all Jewish students had to leave the school. Gedalye spent his last school year in a Jewish gymnasium. After that, he graduated from the Department of Chemistry of the Tallinn Polytechnic Institute. When World War II began, Gedalye worked as an engineer at a chemical factory in a small Estonian town called Kivioli [130 km east of Tallinn].
My father’s eldest sister’s name was Anna. She studied in a Russian gymnasium in Rakvere and finished eight or nine grades. Anna married Faivel Migdal, who was a real estate agent. They lived in Tallinn and were well-off. Aunt Anna considered herself an urban lady: she never spoke Yiddish, mainly Russian. Their son’s name was Gedalye Migdal. He went to a German school, but in 1933 when the fascists came to power in Germany, all Jewish students had to leave the school. Gedalye spent his last school year in a Jewish gymnasium. After that, he graduated from the Department of Chemistry of the Tallinn Polytechnic Institute. When World War II began, Gedalye worked as an engineer at a chemical factory in a small Estonian town called Kivioli [130 km east of Tallinn].
Period
Location
Talinn
Estonia
Interview
Sima Libman