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The memorial erected in Pärnu is dedicated to those who perished in the stormy sea in 1944, as well as to those who survived to keep alive the Estonian spirit abroad and who supported Estonia’s regaining independence. The estimate of the University of Tartu center for the study of Estonians abroad is that about 80,000 Estonian citizens fled West from the invading Soviet terror.
About 6,000 persons did not survive the flight across the sea. To this day we know embarrassingly little about how hundreds of thousands of our people set off for Sweden and Germany on those stormy September days in small boats as well as larger ships. There are as yet no detailed studies about how many died during the journey; how storms, sickness and pursuit exhausted them; how they were torpedoed on the way. The results were often tragic, as with the hospital ship “Moero.”
One of the main reasons for such a mass flight was fear of the repeat of deportations and repression, which had occurred during the first Soviet occupation beginning in 1940. In the Swedish and German DP (displaced person)* camps, our people used all available means to preserve their lives and national identity, working for the re-independence of Estonia. Abroad, in their new places of residence, they established Estonian societies, schools, publishing houses, choirs, and folk dancing groups; they jointly bought property, taught their children Estonian in summer camps - preserved their Estonian heritage. Older officers contacted Western armed and intelligence forces, church people contacted religious international institutions.
Estonian politically-oriented central organizations abroad worked alongside the diplomatic fight to keep alive the Republic of Estonia’s legal continuity as a nation. Established as the central organization to unite the widely dispersed Estonians abroad was the Estonian World Council (EWC),** founded in the New York Estonian House. JBANC, the representative of Baltic Americans, was founded in Washington DC. One of its founders was the Estonian American National Council (EANC), the central organization of Estonian Americans, which also worked toward the re-establishment of Estonian independence. Refugee youth-established BATUN in New York (Baltic Appeal to the United Nations) actively directed attention to the MRP secret accords and the injustice done to the Baltic countries.Estonian Socialist Soviet Republic officials were either silent about the fate of Estonian refugees, or regularly slandered them, for decades. Viewing the post-war period with a comparison of life in Estonia with that of Estonians abroad would be important. Our global, active refugee communities would thus find their rightful place in our joint history.
Remember those who lost their lives, home, youth or those whose future was stolen, and honor those who lived, who, even living abroad, gave their contribution to the preservation of Estonian heritage and the re-independence of Estonia!
The preservation of a nation is tied to knowing its entire history. We must strive toward that. We are one people, whose country of unity is Estonia.
The memorial erected in Pärnu is dedicated to those who perished in the stormy sea in 1944, as well as to those who survived to keep alive the Estonian spirit abroad and who supported Estonia’s regaining independence. The estimate of the University of Tartu center for the study of Estonians abroad is that about 80,000 Estonian citizens fled West from the invading Soviet terror.
About 6,000 persons did not survive the flight across the sea. To this day we know embarrassingly little about how hundreds of thousands of our people set off for Sweden and Germany on those stormy September days in small boats as well as larger ships. There are as yet no detailed studies about how many died during the journey; how storms, sickness and pursuit exhausted them; how they were torpedoed on the way. The results were often tragic, as with the hospital ship “Moero.”
One of the main reasons for such a mass flight was fear of the repeat of deportations and repression, which had occurred during the first Soviet occupation beginning in 1940. In the Swedish and German DP (displaced person)* camps, our people used all available means to preserve their lives and national identity, working for the re-independence of Estonia. Abroad, in their new places of residence, they established Estonian societies, schools, publishing houses, choirs, and folk dancing groups; they jointly bought property, taught their children Estonian in summer camps - preserved their Estonian heritage. Older officers contacted Western armed and intelligence forces, church people contacted religious international institutions.
Estonian politically-oriented central organizations abroad worked alongside the diplomatic fight to keep alive the Republic of Estonia’s legal continuity as a nation. Established as the central organization to unite the widely dispersed Estonians abroad was the Estonian World Council (EWC),** founded in the New York Estonian House. JBANC, the representative of Baltic Americans, was founded in Washington DC. One of its founders was the Estonian American National Council (EANC), the central organization of Estonian Americans, which also worked toward the re-establishment of Estonian independence. Refugee youth-established BATUN in New York (Baltic Appeal to the United Nations) actively directed attention to the MRP secret accords and the injustice done to the Baltic countries.Estonian Socialist Soviet Republic officials were either silent about the fate of Estonian refugees, or regularly slandered them, for decades. Viewing the post-war period with a comparison of life in Estonia with that of Estonians abroad would be important. Our global, active refugee communities would thus find their rightful place in our joint history.
Remember those who lost their lives, home, youth or those whose future was stolen, and honor those who lived, who, even living abroad, gave their contribution to the preservation of Estonian heritage and the re-independence of Estonia!
The preservation of a nation is tied to knowing its entire history. We must strive toward that. We are one people, whose country of unity is Estonia.
.* Ferdinand Kool, DP Chronicle, Estonian Archives in the
US, 1999.
** EWC, Estonians Around the World, 2019.
Written by EWC the chair of the Mass
Flight of 1944 Committee Iivi Zájedová.
Translated by EWC vice president Marju
Rink-Abel
