Estonia: Almost extinguished, successfully reborn

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ESTONIA: Almost extinguished, successfully reborn kilometres and landed in primitive conditions as slave labour to face cold, hunger and the denial of their basic rights. The men were arrested and most died during their first winter in the GULAG or were shot. After many years only 4331 deportees or less than half were able to return to their homeland. The 1941 deportees included about ten per cent of the Estonian Jewish community. Among the most shocking testimonies preserved is the diary of the then 10-year old Rein Vare, covering the years 1941–44. With a seriousness of an adult, he notes the deaths of his playmates and draws pictures of their graves. Rein describes the beginning of the deportation, the journey to their Siberian destination, and events that took place there. A large part of the diary is dedicated to Rein’s beloved father, a school teacher from Sausti near Tallinn, who had been separated from his family and was starved to death during the winter of 1941/42. As the family was not informed of his fate, in his son’s imagination and diary, the father continued to live. In 1946, after the end of the war, Rein Vare and his sister were allowed to return to Estonia to live with relatives there. Their mother, who desperately tried to be reunited with her children, fled from Siberia but was caught in Leningrad before reac-hing Estonia and sentenced to another three years in the Gulag. In 1951, twenty year old Rein Vare who had meanwhile graduated from a school in Estonia, was arrested again. He was kept in the Patarei prison of Tallinn for a few months and then was sent back to exile in Siberia. 18
ESTONIA: Almost extinguished, successfully reborn Although the remaining Vare family members managed to return to their home country in 1958, they were not the same people any more. Rein Vare became embittered, had difficulties of keeping a permanent job, and fell prey to the abuse of alcohol. He died in solitude in the year made famous by George Orwell – 1984 – a broken man. His diary was discovered only after his death and was published in independent Estonia. Rein Vare’s diary can be seen as an Estonian version of the Diary of Anne Frank. The first year of the Soviet Communist regime made a profound impact on the Estonian people. The scope and cruelty of indiscriminate violence were so shocking and defying all common sense that the whole nation instinctively reached one and the same conclusion – nothing could have been worse. Traditionally public opinion in Estonia in 1930s tended to be less sympathetic to Germany than to Russia. After June 14, 1941, Hitler’s Germany was considered the lesser of two very great evils. 19
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Estonia: Almost extinguished, successfully reborn

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