Tag #128810 - Interview #78169 (rachel randvee)

My mother, Hesse Heiman, was born in Tartu in 1895. She was the youngest child and the favorite in the family. When Grandfather Tevye died my mother was 12 or 13 years old, and the elder siblings helped my grandmother to bring her up. For a few years my mother studied in some school in Tartu, I believe it was a cheder. When she was 15 she went to Warsaw to study sewing. [Editor's note: Before WWI Warsaw and much of Poland as well as Estonia were part of the Russian Empire.] My mother studied there for two years in a school that trained tailors of top qualification. She had a certificate confirming her graduation from that school; it was later posted on a wall in my mother's workshop.