Tag #129240 - Interview #100063 (Edith Umova)

We knew nothing about my father, who had stayed in Estonia. When we arrived at our point of destination in the evacuation, we received one letter from him. His theater ‘Estonia’ relocated to Yaroslavl, but he stayed in Tallinn. Many other actors also stayed at home, but they were Estonian nationals, while my father was a Jew. When the Soviet army was still in Tallinn, my father was recruited into the army. He wrote us that he had been assigned to serve on a ship. There were two other Jewish recruits on this ship, who were also from Tallinn and whom my father knew. I can’t remember what else he wrote in this letter. Unfortunately, the letter got lost. In the 1980s my mother threw away our old wardrobe, and she forgot to take out the old letters and even some documents. So, everything was gone. This was the only letter from my father. This was all the information we had about him.

After the war my mother received notification that my father was missing. His ship sank near Hanka Island. I found this island on the map. It’s a Finnish island. It isn’t known whether these were German or Soviet forces that destroyed the ship. There was firing from both sides. Later on my mother bumped into a Jewish man, who lived in Tallinn, in the street. He told her that the ship sank near the island, and many managed to reach the shore. This man, whose name I can’t remember, reached the Russians. He served at the front line until the end of the war and survived. He didn’t know anything about my father. He never saw my father after the ship sank. So my father was missing from any records.