60th Anniversary of Escape from Estonia
Helgi Leesment
On September 26, 2004, several Calgary Estonians gathered at a restaurant to commemorate a sad and dangerous life-altering experience 60 years ago.
Approximately 100,000 Estonians, fearing for their lives, fled their homeland throughout 1944; the largest numbers during the third week of September. At the time, everyone thought this was a temporary situation and that everything would be straightened out in a few months, then sometime in 1945, all the Estonians would go back home to the politically independent Estonia which had existed since February 24, 1918. That did not happen.
Unknown to much of the world at that time, Russia and Germany under Stalin and Hitler, had signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in 1939 containing secret clauses allocating the three Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to Soviet ownership. Consequently, the Russians occupied the independent state of Estonia in 1940 giving Estonians first-hand experience with Soviet Communist brutality. Tens of thousands of Estonian citizens were deported to Siberia, hundreds dying enroute in cold cattle cars. Others tasted terror within the borders of their own country.
In 1941 Germany declared war on Russia and its army swept through the Baltic States driving out the Russians. Hitler’s long-term plans for Estonia also involved occupation by armed forces, servitude and loss of national identity. Thus, Estonia, a country of approximately one million inhabitants at that time, was attacked and occupied during WWII by both sides - the Allies and the Axis.
In 1944 when Germany was losing the war, Soviet forces quickly advanced on Estonia as German forces retreated. Upon hearing of the Red Army’s advance and seeing the Germans withdrawing, Estonians came to the horrific realization that, once more, they would become victims of the Russian Soviet Communist regime.
No nation is able to maintain its own defence system while occupied in turn by two overwhelmingly large foreign armed forces within a time span of four years. Estonia’s own army had been dissolved by the Soviets in 1940 and its soldiers deported to Siberia. Estonian men were conscripted first into the Russian Red Army, and after 1941, into the German armed forces. This created untenable situations where sometimes Estonian brother was forced to fight against brother, or father against son, in battles they did not want to fight, mostly on foreign territory where neither wanted to be. They, like all other Estonians, just wanted their own nation’s independence to survive.
Estonian soldiers did attempt to protect the country from the second Soviet invasion in 1944. In July and August, despite heavy casualties, they held off the Soviet advance in the Blue Mountains and other areas of eastern Estonia. Thanks to these soldiers’ willingness to risk their lives against huge odds, tens of thousands of other people were able to escape the country.
By late September 1944, anyone who had played any role against Russians during the earlier occupation, clearly understood that their lives were in danger. They could expect to be arrested, tortured, executed or shipped to slave labour camps by the returning Soviets for such activities as being a police officer, educator, publisher, land-owner, politician, fishing boat owner, news reporter, apartment building manager, girl guide/scout troop leader, writer, businessman, lawyer or leader of any kind.
Thus, Estonians scrambled to board almost any kind of floating vehicle and headed for neutral Sweden. German armed forces permitted refugees aboard their own ships retreating to Germany but tried to stop people from heading toward Sweden - shooting, bombing and arresting those. This meant that escaping Estonians had to fear both the Germans and Russians while trying to find small boats in the dark, hidden in various coves and at small wharves. They also feared air and underwater attacks from both sides while negotiating the stormy Baltic Sea, many without adequate charts.
Most escapees reached the safety of other shores despite a violent autumn storm on September 23 & 24, 1944. There were many close calls due to rocky outcrops, insufficient fuel and floating mines. Doubtless, many perished for those three reasons. Some ships and small fishing boats were bombed or torpedoed. There are no records of who was aboard what, as people negotiated with boat owners for passage, often without either party knowing who the other was.
Estonians who landed in the eastern section of Germany had to escape again a few months later when the Soviets battled their way into what eventually became the state of East Germany.
Understandably, in September 1944, the decision to leave Estonia was made quickly, especially upon hearing rumors of available space on an escape boat. There was no time to plan what to pack or to inform close relatives. Bear in mind, there were no cell phones or computers in the 1940’s, and land line telephones were found in only a small percentage of city homes, rarely in the countryside where older family members tended to reside. Sometimes families became separated, parents from children and spouses from each other. In the West, most were able to link up later thanks to help from the Red Cross and other international agencies. When a family member or relative had left Estonia, Soviet policy forbade reunions with family members inside the Soviet Union. Further, Stalin had a policy of forbidding all contact and correspondence with anyone outside the Soviet Union. Thus grandparents in Estonia died in old age without ever knowing whether their children and grandchildren were alive somewhere else or not. The outside contact restriction was partially eased after Stalin’s death in 1953. Even after that, with censored correspondence, a whole generation of Estonian grandchildren grew up in Australia, Canada, Sweden, Germany, Argentina, USA, Great Britain and other places without knowing their grandparents. Separated spouses sometimes remarried without knowing for sure whether or not they were widows/widowers, and tried to make a new life.
So, who were some of the Calgarians who had experienced the above catastrophe?
One was a 17-year old girl attending boarding school away from her rural home. As the school officials’ understanding of Estonia’s desperate plight grew, someone talked the girl into joining them in an impulse escape attempt. She balked at leaving her family behind, especially without being able to contact them. Eventually, in Sweden, the girl discovered that her family also had escaped, with equal misgivings about leaving her behind. The parents and all children of this family were reunited in Sweden.
Another young girl had been sent to Finland by her mother, for safety, along with her older sister. A bomb just missed the room occupied by the two girls in Helsinki. Her story is told in a separate article within this issue of AjaKaja.
Another person was too young to remember the escape, but much later as adult, she had asked her parents to put the experience in writing. She read out parts of her late parents’ story. It was a case of her parents knowing the right people (to be aware of likely ships and available space on them) - the family having risked the hiding of businessmen, various freedom fighters and a mobile printing press in their home; the intended escape ship having been taken over by the Germans for troop transportation; and a superstitious captain who would not sail the alternate ship on a Friday. There was the same violent night storm experienced by all who crossed that sea at that time and much illness onboard the deliberately unlit ship. There was the incredible sense of calm and relief at being generously welcomed by Swedes at a coastal town with electrical lights turned on at night. This was in direct contrast to Tallinn and other Estonian cities and towns, which, for the previous five years, had a black-out imposed to minimize accuracy during night bombing raids.
After escaping to Germany, a seven-year-old boy ended up travelling alone in a divided Germany to see both of his Estonian parents. From the end of WWII in 1945 until 1949, Germany was divided into four Allied military occupation zones: French, British, American and Russian. The boy’s father resided in the French zone while his mother lived in the American zone. Food and cigarettes were in short supply. Cigarettes were a kind of substitute currency at that time; they could be bartered for sparsely available goods. One parent was able to provide cigarettes and the other had access to sausages. The young boy regularly smuggled these products past the unsuspecting zone-border guards, thus helping the entire family.
One participant at the Calgary gathering had not been born at the time his parents escaped from Estonia. As it happened, each of his parents escaped during that September on a different ship to Germany where they had to endure a precarious existence until the Allies occupied the country. They were outsiders in a foreign land and had to find work in order to feed themselves. The uncertain existence continued in displaced person camps after the war where the threat of being deported back to Estonia to the harsh existence in Stalin's new regime loomed. Spirits were high despite the grim conditions and food shortages. The war at least was over. A few years after the war ended, both parents migrated on separate ships to Australia seeking new opportunities in life. It is amazing that they met each other for the first time in Australia - two refugees so far and so many years from their homeland.
