ESTONIA: Almost extinguished, successfully reborn

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.
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