Tag #128895 - Interview #78072 (elkhonen saks)

I received a grant, which allowed for a modest life. Since then I could always provide for myself. As a student, I worked at construction sites. First as a worker, then as a foreman. My friends used to give me summaries of the lectures, and I studied them at night. During the first year I worked as a foreman with captive Germans. We were building a large dockyard. It was easy to work with them. They were very disciplined and wanted to show that they were not anti-Semitic all the time. Then I worked with a very difficult contingent, with so-called construction battalions [14], but I made it. In this manner I studied and worked for three years.

Then I got married in 1948 and moved from the dormitory to my wife's apartment. My wife, Erica Saks [nee Vajna], worked as a laboratory assistant in our institute. That's where I met her. Erica was an Estonian. She was 24. She was a very attractive woman. She had been married once, but divorced her husband during the war. She had a small son, Raupo, aged 6. My marriage upset my father quite badly. He wrote me a very harsh letter condemning my marriage. He believed that I shouldn't have married a woman who already had a child, and especially not a non-Jewish person. But I loved Erica so much. My sister Ite always said that father loved me more than her. However, he had forgiven her marrying an Estonian, but he somehow couldn't forgive me.