Remembering the terror

As the children, grandchildren of those who went through that trauma, we have a collective responsibility. To ensure that our own offspring are aware of what two totalitarian regimes wrought. First upon Europe, then spreading into a genuine global conflagration of death. Of how the crazed dreams of expansion of fascist and communist leaders led to division of a continent, resulting in decades of occupation and the enforcement of a twisted ideology, communism. Imposed through deportations to Siberia, summary arrests, executions and deprivations unimaginable to those raised in the free Western world.

Many of our parents refused to talk about their experiences in our childhood. Mine were no exception. Mother was but a child, wrested from while not comfort but certainly from a secure identity. Fleeing with her mother and brother at the age of ten, her father conscripted into the German army. For decades she did not know what happened to him. For the rest of her life she proudly insisted on being an Estonian first, a resident of the land where she was forced to live second. Canada was the first, and sadly last country that she moved to, not by fleeing, but conscious choice. This because of the growing and influential Estonian refugee community. Toronto was the place to raise her children as Estonians. Sadly, though she was able to visit occupied Estonia numerous times, she never saw the restoration of independence. Nor any of her grandchildren, also raised knowing the importance of being Estonian, to paraphrase the title of Oscar Wilde’s satirical comedy of morals.