By the autumn of 1944 the Red Army was pushing south and rather than face life under a second Soviet occupation my Latvian family decided to join the many thousands of their compatriots and flee the country. Memories of the first Soviet invasion in 1940-41 were still fresh in their minds and they would rather face an uncertain future abroad than stay and live under Russian rule. I don’t know the exact dates but they left sometime in the autumn of 1944 when the last pictures of my mother were taken and after that they headed to the coast to try and get on one of the many boats leaving for Germany or Sweden. What the journey was like I can only surmise but it was potentially perilous and some boats didn’t make their destinations with resulting loss of life. I found this short clip of Latvian refugees boarding a boat bound for Germany - I imagine that my mother and grandmother were in a similar situation but I don’t know where they sailed from or where they disembarked. All I know is that by Christmas 1944 they were in a place called Königs Wusterhausen which is just outside Berlin. It is faintly written in pencil on the yellowing sheet of typewritten Latvian Christmas carols which I found in my grandmother’s effects.
Identity photo of my grandmother, photo of my grandmother in Displaced Persons Camp, Oldenburg, photo inscription, typewritten Latvian Christmas Carol, crucifix
I have already written about what I know of their life in the Displaced Persons Camp after the war in my post on Exile - but I know very little about their life in Germany before the end of the war. What did they do? Where did they live? The only story I remember my mother telling me used to fill me with horror. Refugees in Germany were often used as forced labour and my mother and her friend Gloria were made to work for the German Luftwaffe in one of their factories. This must have been potentially very dangerous work with a high likelihood of being bombed in these last months of the war. For whatever reason they both decided they had had enough and fled. They made for the nearest railway station and hid their uniforms before jumping on a train and disappearing as the Gestapo searched the station for them. Whether this story has been exaggerated in the retelling I have no way of knowing now but they were lucky to escape with their lives. They must have ended up further west as by the end of the war Konigs Wusterhausen was in the Soviet sector of Germany and they would have definitely been repatriated if they had stayed there. I heard this story many times as I was growing up and always felt shame that I had a mother who worked for the Germans during the war. Never mind that she didn’t have any choice in the matter - how the young take the moral high ground!
Occupation zones in postwar Germany. Oldenburg is in the NW corner not far from the border with the Netherlands. Source Wikipedia.
The original plan for those displaced as a result of World War II was to repatriate them to their countries of origin as quickly as possible. The military forces in the various Allied Occupation Zones tended to the immediate needs of the refugees located within their particular zone and set in motion repatriation plans but by October 1945 the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) took responsibility for the administration of displaced persons in Europe. Refugees from the Baltic States were virtually unanimous in their opposition to repatriation as they feared reprisals from the Soviets. My family eventually ended up in the DP camp for Latvians in Oldenburg which was in the British military zone. I don’t have any information about how and when they travelled there, how they reunited or what their life in the camp was like. All that remains of that time is the single photograph of my grandmother sitting on the bench……
My grandmother, Oldenburg DP camp, 1947
…..and this magazine that I recently found which was printed in the summer of 1946 - Our Latvia, authorised by UNRRA and probably distributed to the Latvian DP camps. It is a mixture of articles, poetry and photographs of the Latvia they left behind. The foreword is particularly poignant …..“A heavy iron curtain separates us from the homeland and the loved ones who remained there……To invisible companions, the longings and thoughts of all of us are connected with the homeland Latvia - the Latvia as it was before the brutal occupation where the free Latvian people lived their happy lives in peace and partisanship.”
Our Latvia - The Land that Remained in the Fire
Poems - Fatherland and Homeland
Foreword, published summer 1946, Nuremberg
Latvian Faith - poem