Tag #128493 - Interview #99672 (Sima Libman)

In summer 1917, when my parents’ engagement took place, a number of very important events happened: The October Revolution [see Russian Revolution of 1917] [9] and the Civil War [10] in Russia, the Estonian War of Liberation, and Estonian Independence [11]. My parents found themselves at opposite sides of the border. They wrote letters to each other and eagerly waited for a chance to meet. My mother forwarded several petitions to be allowed to visit her fiancé in Estonia but every request was denied. It was only in spring 1923 that she was permitted to visit her relatives in Estonia for a short period. My mother traveled to Tallinn and, naturally, didn’t return to the USSR. Later, in the 1930s, she really wanted to see her relatives in Leningrad but wasn’t allowed in. She did see her brother and sister after World War II, but her parents weren’t alive then.