Fleeing Estonia to Start a New Life
Ain Dave Kiil
Like thousands of other Estonians, my life as an eight-year-old farm boy changed drastically in September of 1944 when the Russian forces overcame any remaining military resistance in the country and began an unwelcome occupation that lasted some 50 years. My family joined many other boat people who were forced to leave their homes in a hurry.
Manivald Jõgi, a historian, has written about the people in Lümanda and Kihelkonna counties who escaped to the West in 1944. (Kaheaastaraamat, 1999-2000, Saaremaa Museum). Many of Saaremaa’s coastal villages lost more than 25% of their population; in total, over 800 people escaped from the above two counties. In addition, 127 people were deported to Siberia. Others were shot in Kuressaare Castle.
My family farm was located near the shore of Pilguse Bay on the west coast of Saaremaa, the largest island in the Baltic Sea. My earliest memories include being treated to the best-tasting ice cream following church service at the Lutheran Church in Kihelkonna, hanging on to a bedpost for dear life so I didn’t have to go for immunization shots, splashing in the shallow waters of the Bay watching flounder trying to hide in the sand, or searching for four-leaf clover in the meadows surrounding the farm. I was to attend Lümanda Elementary School that autumn when my family made the fateful decision to escape the “sickle and hammer” tyranny of the Stalin regime
Three years earlier, in August of 1941, my 20-year-old brother Kalju was mobilized into the Russian Army just prior to the arrival of the Germans. He was taken by ship and train via Tallinn and Leningrad to Siberia. He never saw his family again, having reportedly been shot in the back while searching for food in a field of peas.
I imagine that my parents didn’t agonize too long before deciding to put some distance between the rapidly-advancing Russians and ourselves. The opportunity to leave for Sweden came during harvest time on September 21, my older sister Lehte’s birthday! But it didn’t turn out as a very happy day for her.
That evening, all of the harvesters were seated around the dinner table in our farmhouse, enjoying the well-deserved food and home-made beer after a long day in the field. During the traditional singing of the “dinner song”, my family left through the back door to start the journey to the departure point near Pilguse Bay, a couple of kilometers away.
The road took us by our Holland-type windmill where my mother Leena (nee Kuivjõgi) asked a friend to inform Kalju of our departure in the unlikely event that my brother ever returned home from Siberia.
When my father Edmund, my mother and sister arrived at the departure point near Katri, preparations were well underway for a hasty departure that evening. My younger sister Õie, who was attending Kuressaare Gümnasium (High School) at the time, was expected to join us. The 30-some km trip by bicycle took longer than planned as her bike had a flat tire. Fortunately, a friendly farmer was able to fix the tire and she made it to the waiting boat.
My parents now faced an agonizing decision as one member of our family could not be accommodated on the boat. As a result, my older sister Lehte stayed behind, not knowing if she would ever be able to rejoin us in Sweden.
The boat, filled to capacity with about 20 passengers, including members of the Sepp, Himmist and Kiil families, departed for Gotland at the onset of darkness. During the next day, I remember seeing an airplane in the distance. It did not approach our boat, as it was likely a German reconnaissance aircraft. We reached the coast of Gotland late in the day or early the following morning. In the days that followed, our group was processed through quarantine and housed in what I recall as a large warehouse which served as our home for several weeks.
Our next stop was at a refugee camp (Vinnerby?) on the mainland. I spent the first winter here with my mother, whereas my father and younger sister were housed elsewhere. It was here that I strapped tube skates onto my boots for the first time and tried to skate on the moat ice around a Swedish castle. It was also during that time that my mother, who had been a teacher in her youth, tried to teach me to read and to remember the multiplication and division tables.
Our family was reunited around Christmas as Lehte found us with the help of a refugee newspaper. Apparently two men from a nearby village had returned to Saaremaa a couple of weeks after our departure to take their own families to safety in Sweden. One of the men, Ats Lääs, became aware of my sister’s predicament and found room for her in his boat. It was likely one of the last boats to leave the Island .
Our next destination was Landskrona in southern Sweden where we stayed in accommodation near the waterfront, along with other Estonian refugees.
In the summer of 1945, our family settled in Björknäs, a small community about a 20-minute bus ride from Stockholm. I was enrolled in the Stockholm Estonian School and attended the school until we left for Canada during the last week of 1950, arriving in Halifax aboard the refugee ship General Ballou in mid- January.
I’ve been asked: What would have happened to you if you remained in Saaremaa? One can only speculate. My family may well have been deported to Siberia in the late 1940’s or even during the mid-fifties. Death in Siberia would have been a possibility, or a return to Saaremaa. Work on a collective farm and/or mobilization into the Soviet military are other possibilities.
Last summer, sixty years after the fateful journey to Sweden, I visited our departure point on Pilguse Bay not as a barefooted eight-year-old but as a seasoned tourist on the trail of his ancestral roots.
