Dvorkina (Kopylovskaya, Fesser) Tamara Samuilovna (born 21 September 1914, Liepāja) — civil servant. After completing secondary education in Liepāja, she studied in Nancy, France, from 1932 to 1936, graduating as an economist. On her return to Liepāja, she married Riga resident Dvorkin Iokhezk (b. 1897 – d. 7 May 1941) in 1939. During the occupation of Latvia, she was interned in the Riga concentration camp–ghetto and later deported to Pskov and Krustpils for forced labour. She escaped to Tallinn, hiding with acquaintances until the Soviet forces liberated the city in 1944. She then secured employment in the Tallinn Naval Defence District’s supply department as a bookkeeper.

On 11 May 1945, Tamara Dvorkina was arrested and, on 25 February 1946, sentenced to five years’ imprisonment under Article С‑07. She served her sentence in the Ivdel camp in Sverdlovsk Oblast and was released on 10 December 1947, following a sentence reduction decree issued on 7 July 1945. She returned to Riga in 1948.

From 1948–49 she worked as a receptionist at the Riga Fashion Atelier (12 Blaumana Street). In 1949 she became a personnel inspector for the construction of the “ZIS” sanatorium in Ķemeri, and from 1950–52 she was employed at Sanatorium No. 1 in Ķemeri. Between 1954 and 1955 she worked as a milliner at the Riga artel “Zvaigzne”, and later at the Riga sewing factory (1957–63) and the “Promtekhmontazh” trust. On 10 August 1963, she was fully rehabilitated by Verdict No. 0094 of the Supreme Court of the Estonian SSR.

In 1957 Dvorkina married Aron Abramovich (born 1908), who had moved from Leningrad with his underage daughter, Evgeniya Abramovich (b. 1943). Soon after, Abramovich applied to repatriate to Poland. Tamara remained in Latvia, citing differences over the upbringing of his daughter. The couple divorced in 1958 but continued cohabiting, remarrying in April 1959 shortly before Abramovich and his daughter moved to Poland. She received an invitation to join them in September 1959, but her permit to leave was repeatedly refused. In the early 1960s she informed her husband that she would not be able to join him and that he was free to go his own way; no further contact was made.

In the mid-1960s, she adopted the surname Fesser and, in 1967, emigrated from Riga to Israel. Later she resided in the Federal Republic of Germany.

Family

Aron Abramovich (b. 1908) — second husband
Samuil Kopylovsky (b. 1883) — father
Raissa Yufa (b. 1902) — stepmother
Iokhetsk Dvorkin (1897–1941) — first husband
Asya (Berta) Kopylovskaya (1881–1941) — mother