Tag #128901 - Interview #99833 (Morris Schiff)

After sanatorium father had spent one year in Vienna as great grandmother insisted. He liked Vienna very much. Great grandmother was entrepreneurial. She was the only who made money and she enjoyed respect of businessmen. As for her agents, the Christians, she could enter their place only from the back door, because she was a Jew. These were such humiliating rules for the Jews and even money could not change it. A Jew had no right to go to the ball room. My father was baptized and those rules did not apply to him. He was a habitué of the dancing parties. He was often invited there as he was considered to be a rich heir. Great grandmother was cruel. He did not let father live in her apartment, she rented some lodging for him.. Father told me about one case, which characterized great grandmother. Once father came home and saw that the door was burgled in. He came in the room and saw that his desk was open and papers were all over the floor. Father could not get what was happening. The neighbors told him that some old lady came, rang the door and when nobody answered, she called the janitor, pointed at the door and said: «Break!». Great grandmother came to see what her grandson was doing. She had the toughest character.

Only in Vienna father found out that he came of Jewish family and that his great grandmother was a Jew and her son Morris was a Jew. Father did not know anything about his Jewish origin before that. It changed his life. Probably in Vienna he decided that he would marry only a Jew. At any rate when he was back home, he started looking for a bride among Jewish girls, without telling anything to his parents. Grandmother would definitely be against that marriage. My father met mother by chance. Mother told me that during the shopping father came up to her and asked her why she had such accent when speaking Estonian. Mother lied to dad saying that she was from Russia. In actuality she was born in Estonian town Narva [about 200 km from Tallinn], bordering on Russia. My mother really spoke bad Estonian and her Russian was no so good. Narva dialect differed from typical Russia. Somehow mother felt awkward to tell father the truth. This is how they met and started seeing each other.