President Bush visited Latvia today. In his remarks, he stated that “Yalta was a betrayal of freedom” and shone a spotlight upon a terrible injustice that has been hidden in shadows for 60 years.
I take special pride and satisfaction in President Bush’s words, for my husband’s parents were among the fortunate refugees who escaped from the Soviet army as its tanks rolled triumphantly into Latvia to collect the spoils of war at the end of World War II. At last, an American president has called attention to the shame of the Yalta Conference.
I’ve met very few people who can even name the Baltic states, let alone recount any of their tragic histories. Until I met my husband, I had never heard of Latvia. The dreadful suffering endured by the displaced peoples of Eastern Europe after the Yalta Conference is a lost thread in the complex tapestry of that tumultuous time in history. The Jewish Holocaust is well documented and remembered, as it certainly should be. But the horrors that engulfed Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia after the Soviet Union claimed dominion over them has remained a secret travesty for all these years.
About two years ago, one of my nieces asked my husband to document his family’s story for a history project she was working on. Pete interviewed his mother, who lives in New York. He tape recorded their many telephone conversations and then hand wrote his account. I typed it so that we could e-mail it to my niece, and I was amazed by what I learned as I transcribed his writing.
My husband’s story is divided into three parts, and the first appears below:
Part I – Escape From Latvia
Latvia is a small country on the Baltic Sea, about the size of West Virginia. Neighboring countries include Estonia, Lithuania, Russia, and, across the Baltic Sea, Sweden and Finland. Through the ages, Latvia has been controlled by Sweden, Germany and Russia.
In the late 1800s, Latvia wanted to be independent of German rule and began to accept Russian policies. By the early 1900s, both Russia and Germany sought to control Latvia. In 1918, Latvia began pushing for autonomy from Russia, which they had thought was a democratic country. In 1920, Latvia won independence from Russia and Germany. In 1930, Hitler and Stalin divided Europe, and the Baltic countries came under the control of Russia. Latvians were mobilized into the armed forces of Russia. Many were sent to Russia to work.
When World War II started, Germany captured Latvia. Again, Latvians were forced into the armed forces, this time on the German side. Latvia was important strategically because it provided ports for navy ships. The Germans needed the ports to attack Russia; Russia needed them to gain access to the Atlantic Ocean.
By 1944, Germany was losing the war. As the Russian forces advanced into Latvia, many Latvian people fled the country. They wanted to escape, because they had experienced Soviet occupation in 1939-40, when many Latvians were sent to Russian work camps or killed in mass executions.
As the Germans withdrew, the ports of the Baltic Sea were used to evacuate supplies, soldiers, and refugees. My parents did not know each other at this time. They met later, in a camp in Germany.
Both of my parents lived in the same county, not too far from each other. There was much confusion during this period of time. Families did not know what to do. Some family members were soldiers, other were working for the occupation army, while others were at home. It was impossible to get everyone together. My mother’s side of the family followed the retreating German army. She could not convince her sister to leave home. When the Soviets took over, my aunt’s husband was sentenced to 15 years in a Siberian labor camp.
My uncle was one of the lucky ones. At least he did not get executed by Stalin’s army, as so many others did. It is impossible to know how many people were exterminated under Stalin’s death squads.
My mother and her parents walked to the ships, with other people of their village who were fleeing. This took over a month. Some people died along the way, either from airplane bombings, illnesses, or becoming lost.
My father’s side of the story is similar, but he was the only one in his family to make it out of Latvia. Each Latvian family has their own story of how they got from Latvia to Germany, then from Germany to where they live today.
The ports on the Baltic were in confusion. The ships used to carry refugees were the same ones used to carry troops. Many families were separated, as some members of a family went on one ship while others went on another. My mother’s family and my father were on the same ship. My mother told me that, on the way to Germany, their ship had to pick up survivors from a transport ship that had been sunk earlier.
When they arrived in Germany, the refugees were again separated. More families were split up. The war was not yet over, so the refugees were sent to different work camps in eastern Germany. My mother, her parents, and my father were sent to a work camp to build a coal power plant. In the camp, they were treated like prisoners. Women and children filled wheel barrels of gravel or sand to make cement. Men mixed cement and built the power plant. Small children were taken care of by the old women while the parents worked. You worked if you were sick or not.
The housing consisted of wooden barracks that housed 21 people sleeping on bunk beds three high. A wood burning stove provided heat. Refugees chopped the wood. There was no education, books to read, or recreational activities. Death was common among young children and elderly people. Burials were brief and without ceremony.
Food in the camp barely kept a person alive. There was a central cooking area in the camp consisting of a large pot. Breakfast consisted of a piece of bread and some sort of liquid that was called coffee, but it wasn’t. Lunch was soup made from turnips. Dinner was bread and “coffee” again. It was the same every day. People looked in the trash left from the guards’ meals to find anything that was edible.
Next installment: American liberation and the journey to an American camp.
