Many years ago--in May 2005, to be exact--I made a series of posts to this blog about the refugee crisis after World War II. I transcribed the dozens of yellow legal pages handwritten by my late husband, Pete, based on several interviews with his mother, who had been a Latvian refugee.
Because he was relaying the story at the time to my young niece for a school project, he edited out many of the horrors that his parents had experienced. For example, his mother told him about walking along bombed-out railroad tracks and seeing countless dead bodies. One of the bodies, she said, was a man neatly dressed in dress pants, a white shirt and tie--with his head blown off.
Another terrible incident, which Pete did include in his narration, has always stayed with me. It is the story of Russian military trucks arriving in my in-laws' refugee camp in the middle of the night. Everyone was awakened and told to board the trucks. Children were taken from their parents and loaded into separate trucks. The parents were assured they would be reunited at "the new location." The adults realized that they were being led to execution by the Russians. They began to resist by lying down on the ground and refusing to board the trucks. During the ensuing uproar, the trucks with the children inside sped off into the night. None of those parents ever saw their children again.
If you'd like a refresher course about the countless lives from many countries that were shattered three-quarters of a century ago, the following are the links to Pete's family story:
One Clear Call: Yalta's Silent Shame
One Clear Call: Latvians Without a Home
One Clear Call: Latvian Survivors
Reading this story today reminds me how evil is unchanging and ever-present. We human beings don't seem to have learned much; we continue to witness the same brutal atrocities committed by tyrants against good and innocent people who just want to live peaceful lives. Those who opine about the "right side of history" from their comfortable environs don't understand the immense pain and horror suffered by so many people to cut through the bloody center of evil in order to reach that side. I'm grateful that my in-laws, and my husband Pete, have been spared seeing this happen yet again.
