June 14, 1941 is a day that remains emblazoned on the Latvian psyche – this is the day when thousands of our countrymen and women were deported to Siberia, along with [...]]]> My apologies – this post should have been up yesterday, but my Internet provider had an outage, so thus this post comes to you today.

June 14, 1941 is a day that remains emblazoned on the Latvian psyche – this is the day when thousands of our countrymen and women were deported to Siberia, along with thousands of others from the other Baltic countries of Estonia and Lithuania, as well as thousands also from Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova.

The train voyages to Siberia were long, and some died enroute. Many of those deported died in exile and were never able to return to their homelands. Most of those that did return suffered from numerous health ailments that were acquired as a result of the time spent in harsh conditions.

These stories need to be told. If you, reading this, experienced or witnessed these deportations, or other aspects of the war, do not let your stories pass out of memory. Write them down or otherwise record them, share them with your children and grandchildren. You can also share your stories with me and I will publish them here. If your parents or grandparents told you the stories of these times, record and share them as well.

I have a number of books that have been written thus far, that provide stories and experiences of the deporations, so I will provide some excerpts here. These stories serve as a witness to a historical event that too many have forgotten. Let us never forget.

“At 3.20am on June 14, 1941, m parents and I were arrested without a court order or the public prosecutor’s authorisation. We were taken out on the street, loaded into a truck, driven to the Torņakalns station in Rīga and put on a long train of cattle wagons, one of many. At about 2 o’clock in the afternoon, the doors of the wagon opened and my father was called away. He said goodbye to us quickly and pressed into my mother’s hand his gold pocket watch and silver cigarette case, on which, in gold letters, his friends had written their initials and the words ‘For you, it may come in handy!’ In the winter of 1943, this proved to be true. 14 June 1941 was the last time I saw Father as he got off the cattle wagon.”

     -from “I Was Twenty-One” by Aleksandrs Birznieks, in We Sang Through Tears (NB: A memorial stone now stands at Torņakalns train station in Rīga to commemorate all of those who were deported)

“I remember one day, on my way back from pulling logs, I tripped and fell. As I struggled to get up, I saw that I had tripped over a foot, the owner of which was lying there, covered in snow. The famine was appalling. I was still able to divide my little bit of bread into three portions and eat three times, but some people would eat it in one go. Occasionally some tiny fish were issued. In the -40°C to -50°C Arctic cold, we could only drag out one or two logs a day, later on we couldn’t even manage that, but then we didn’t get any bread, either. Day and night, we were continually tormented by the thought of food.”

     -from “The Dark Pages of My Life” by Lidija Vilnis, in We Sang Through Tears

“My mother had hidden our gold items in cloth bundles, and her most expensive one was a bracelet with gems, but she didn’t know which bundle contained it. That she brought back, even though at times it was difficult to find food. Without a doubt, someone would have taken it in exchange for half a bucket of potatoes, but that would be the maximum. Gold does not always have the worth that we think it does.”

     -Zigurds Bētiņš, in Sibīrijas Bērni (translated by me)

“My father ended up in the Vjatlag camp in Kirov oblast, and already in the first year working in the forest, he was not in good health… as much as we can understand from books, the camp had hard work, hard conditions, without groceries. He died there on December 3, 1941. We waited for a long time after the war, always hoping, that no matter how he was – old, stiff, crippled, just that he would be, that he and our mother would be home! That our mother had died, we knew… but our father we waited for long and hard. Officially we heard about his death during the Atmodas period. Before that, there had already been all sorts of news, that he had died. This we learned from those that had returned.”

     -Harijs Ešenvalds, in Sibīrijas Bērni (translated by me)

But back to the topic of [...]]]> Sorry things have been a bit quiet here, I’ve been busy! But in a week’s time I will be concluding my day job so that I can be on my way to Latvia for the summer, and then when I return home to Canada I will be returning to school.

But back to the topic of the post – today is June 14, which is one of the numerous days of remembrance in the Latvian calendar. This day of remembrance is for the victims of Communist terror. It is on this day because it was on June 14, 1941 that the Soviets began mass deportations of tens of thousands of Latvians, Estonians and Lithuanians to Siberia and the gulags. Another larger wave of deportations also took place in 1949.

None of my ancestors were deported to Siberia, but I have found numerous extended relatives in the 1949 deportation lists, particularly from the northern parishes of Vijciems and Lugaži. I also know that most of my maternal grandfather’s parents’ siblings disappeared during this time, but they are not mentioned in These Names Accuse (a book comprised of lists of many of those deported during this time).

I do, however, have an ancestor who was a victim of Communist terror. He was not deported, but rather arrested in 1940 not long after the first Soviet occupation began. This was my great-grandfather Arvīds Francis. He was arrested because he had been a counter-intelligence agent with the Latvian political police force. I am told that most of his time was spent dealing with threats from fascist groups such as Pērkonkrusts, but he was involved in observation of Communist groups as well. He spent the late 1920s and early 1930s as the regional leader in Kuldīga, and his work was, at times, dangerous.

He was arrested on August 3, 1940 and imprisoned in Daugavpils. He was repeatedly interrogated and on June 16, 1941 was sentenced to execution. The sentence was carried out on June 22, 1941. He, along with three other police force members who had worked in the Liepāja area, were buried outside the prison.

An interrogation file was kept, and is currently stored in the Latvian State Archives (not the Latvian State Historical Archives, where I do most of my other research). I attempted to access it when I was in Latvia in December, but was told that I would need to bring proof that I was related to him, which I did not have with me at the time. My uncle was able to access it briefly (his mother is Arvids’ daughter, hence the paper trail of documentation was shorter than it would be for me), but didn’t have a lot of time. He was able to tell me though that it was quite a large file, and mostly in Russian. Now I do have all of my paperwork in order, so I hope to be able to access it this time around.

Five years ago, I was actually in the Baltics on June 14. I was in central Vilnius (Lithuania), where I visited the Soviet Occupation Museum, and outside the walls were covered with commemorative drawings by local children and guarded by members of the Lithuanian army. Nearby was the monument to commemorate Soviet victims of terror.

Other remembrance days in Latvia associated with the Second World War: March 25 (the day the 1949 deportations began), May 8 (the end of the Nazi regime in Europe and remembrance of victims of the Second World War), June 17 (the day the Soviet occupation began), July 4 (Jewish victims, the day a Rīga synagogue was burned down in 1941 with many people inside) and the first Sunday in December (another day for remembrance of victims of Communist terror). I must remember to mention each of them again as they come throughout the year.

Were any of your family members deported to Siberia in 1941? Arrested by the Soviets during the first occupation (1940-1941)? Share your family stories in comments.

Since I’m hosting this edition of the Carnival, I got to choose the topic. I chose War Stories. When I thought of this topic, I initially [...]]]> [This post is for the 28th edition of the Carnival of Central and Eastern European Genealogy, which will be hosted right here. The Carnival post will be up on Friday!]

Since I’m hosting this edition of the Carnival, I got to choose the topic. I chose War Stories. When I thought of this topic, I initially had ideas to talk about the various experience of my family members in World War II, since this was a defining moment of my family’s history, since over the course of the war, all four of my grandparents left Latvia, spent several years in displaced persons camps, and then came to Canada.

However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I should tell a different story – the narrative of my family’s history focuses on World War II so often, it would be interesting to tell a different story for a change.

So instead I will talk about one branch of my family’s experience during World War I and the Russian Revolution. These stories have been told to me by my great-aunt, who is now 98 years old.

When World War I started, Latvia was still a part of the Russian Empire. My great-aunt was three years old, living in Krustpils, which was then part of the Vitebsk guberniya, with her parents Jūle (nee Štelmahers) and Brencis Līcītis. Because of the war front raging through Latvia, the family moved further east, and settled near Rzhev, a city approximately 200km west of Moscow.

The three lived with a Russian family by the surname Kislev in a manor house. The family had two daughters, Vera and Zoya. It is living here that my great-aunt learned to speak Russian, and took great pleasure in going to the local market as well as to the Orthodox church, even though the family was Lutheran. They were not the only Balts living in the area – other Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians had also moved to the Rzhev area to avoid the war.

But World War I was not the only war going on at the time. This was a time of political upheaval in Russia, which eventually led to the 1917 Revolution and the beginning of the Communist era. The family was opposed to Bolshevism early – my great-aunt remembers going with her father to listen to a speech that was given by a political party leader that was opposed to Lenin and his party. After the Bolshevik victory, she also remembers her mother arguing with a Communist about “workers” and what the party would do with people who were unable to work due to age or infirmity, and his response being less than satisfactory. When the Communists came asking how much they were paying in rent to the Kislevs, they lied and said a lower price than they were actually paying. They knew that otherwise the Kislevs would have had even more of their property expropriated for being “kulaks” (affluent farmers), even though they really didn’t have very much.

But the defining moment that showed the family precisely where the Bolsheviks went wrong and why their family would always remain opposed to Communism was when the Communist soldiers came to the village, took the grain stores and burned them in the town square, calling them “rich peoples’ food”. Instead of this grain that they had stored up, the people were given animal feed to eat.

World War I officially ended in 1918, but the following years were still filled with conflict in Eastern Europe, with the civil war in Russia between the various factions, as well as the wars of independence in the Baltics. While Latvia in declared independence on November 18, 1918, this wasn’t officially recognized until the early 1920s.

I’m not certain when exactly the family returned to Krustpils, but it would have been before the autumn of 1919, when my grandmother was born. The wars ended, and Latvia gained an independence that had been lost eight hundred years earlier.

In recounting this story, I’ve realized just how many of the details of this time period are a mystery to me, historically speaking – in Latvian Saturday school, we didn’t really study it. We learned about early Latvian history and the beginnings of German rule. We learned about the following periods of Swedish and Russian rule, and then about some of the Latvian writers of the late 19th century who started to inspire political movements of independence and nationalism. But we didn’t study the independence wars. We celebrated the 18th of November every year, acknowledging independence as being gained in 1918, and that from that day on people lived happily ever after until World War II broke out. The first I recall hearing about the independence wars was looking at some maps in my Latvian historical atlas that I acquired in my first year of Latvian Friday night high school, but I don’t recall ever discussing them in class.

So my mission for the next couple of months is to educate myself more on this time period. It was an important period of Latvian history, and it might hold the key to answering some questions about different types of access to various Latvian genealogical records. I will be sure to share my findings here!