In early 1943 during the Nazi occupation of Latvia my grandmother, step-grandfather and mother left Riga to go and live in Tervete, a village south west of Riga. His parents had a small-holding there and I think they went to live with them. I don’t know the reason for their move but perhaps they felt safer away from the city. My mother would have been just sixteen when she was taken out of school in Riga and made to get a job together with my grandmother at the TB sanitarium in Tervete - their identity photos from this time attest to that. I have already written about this period in their lives here. This is where they spent a year living and working until the threat of another Soviet invasion precipitated their flight from Latvia.
My grandmother’s passport, photo of Tervete sanitarium where she worked, workplace stamp
My grandmother’s passport of the time clearly shows the addition of German wording above the original Latvian wording. Her Latvian name has been translated into German. Note that the German comes first - just another example of the erosion of Latvian national identity during occupation.
Identity photo of my mother, workplace stamp, signature, map of the Soviet blockade, photo of my mother and cousin
I love this little identity photo of my mother. At such a tender age she already has the resigned, solemn expression of someone much older. It can’t have been easy for her as she was definitely a city girl with the usual teenage interests who enjoyed the company of her schoolfriends. Then to be uprooted from her environment to live deep in the countryside far from her friends and forced to work in a TB sanitarium, all the while under German occupation - it must have been unbelievably depressing for her. She never spoke much of this time in her life and there are few photographs as witness. I could only find these few of my grandmother taken shortly after they arrived there. In fact, as I previously wrote, all the photo albums were left behind in the safe-keeping of my stepgrandfather’s parents. It was only much later that my mother found out that after the Soviet invasion they had burned them rather than let them fall into Russian hands. They took only the few most precious ones when they left and these have all ended up in my possession.
I have posted these photographs before here but I now believe that the figure on the right amongst this group of refugees is my mother. I didn’t recognise her at first but comparing it with the photograph above of my mother and horse I see it is the same girl. The horse and building in the background are identical. The photo is inscribed on the rear Tervete refugees, Autumn 1944 and I think must have been taken just before loading their possessions onto horses and carts and preparing to flee. These must be the last photos of my mother on Latvian soil……