Tag #128820 - Interview #78169 (rachel randvee)

In the summer of 1952 I went to stay at a holiday home in the resort place of Vosu, near Tallinn. The staff of Tallinn Polytechnic Institute was staying there at the same time. One of them, a tall athletic Estonian of about 40, started to pay his addresses to me. His name was Tarmo Randvee. He took me to the cinema, picked no one but me as his dancing partner, and accompanied me to the beach. He was constantly next to me and I didn't really like it. I had just been free after my divorce and now I was annoyed again. Besides, he was much older than me and not a Jew. However, one of Tarmo Randvee's colleagues, who stayed in Vosu at that time, turned out to be a former classmate of mine. He counseled me to take a closer look at Tarmo since he was an interesting and honest person. I followed his advice and realized that my classmate was right.

Tarmo and I dated in Tallinn for two and a half years. After that my father had got used to the idea of his daughter marrying an Estonian. We got married in 1955. I never met Tarmo's parents - they had died earlier. His father was a construction worker, and his mother was a housewife. They lived in Tallinn; their family was poor and they couldn't afford their son's education. That's why he worked at a building site and studied at the same time. Before the war Tarmo Randvee graduated from Tallinn Technical College and had a construction engineer's diploma. He married in 1939; in 1941 he was enlisted in a Soviet labor army and went to Russia. Later Tarmo fought against fascist forces in the Estonian Rifle Corps.