Tag #117466 - Interview #83162 (Ester Khanson )

All those good things lasted for several years. Our life was calm and joyful. I had my first suitors, my brother’s pals from the lyceum. Then, in the early 1930s, fascists started seeking power in Germany. I was far from politics, but I remember that my parents first took it calmly, but once we were walking in the street not far from our house, and there were two demonstrations: Nazis on the one side of the street and communists on the other. They were in columns. Each of them was walking on one side of the street and they met. What a horror! Mother and I witnessed this mêlée. I do not remember how we got home. Both of us were crying from horror.

Then such street frays became common. Gradually the atmosphere became tenser and it was very calm in the city. I was afraid to go out, talked my parents into returning to Estonia. Mother was ready to go back, but she did not want to live in Tartu. We decided to settle in Tallinn. Father was the first to leave Berlin to find lodging in Tallinn. As soon as he found a place to live, we came back to Estonia.