Tag #128815 - Interview #78169 (rachel randvee)

In June 1940 the Soviet regime was established in Estonia and nationalization began. Someone suggested a resourceful idea to my father. In order to display his loyalty to the Soviet authorities my father gave both of our shops to 'spetstorg', that is to the trade network belonging to the NKVD [12]. He continued working there - he just wasn't the proprietor any more. Our Jewish school was renamed into a secondary school with a number [see School #] [13] that I don't recall. In the USSR Ivrit was banned so it was subsequently banned in Estonia as well, but we could still use Yiddish. The house we had moved into was taken over by the Soviet authorities for some reason and all its inhabitants were ordered to leave within 24 hours. My father's friend, our gabbai Rakovski, came to our help. He let us have three rooms in his seven-bedroom apartment. We were cramped in there because we had a lot of furniture. But we were thankful to gabbai Rakovski for giving us shelter. A few months later we managed to move into a five-bedroom apartment close to the city center. The former owner of the apartment, an Estonian ship captain, somehow succeeded in moving his family to Sweden after the Soviet regime took over. We let one of our rooms to a Soviet pilot because it wasn't good to own such a large apartment.