When I saw the VEMU announcement for the book launch of Nate Smelle’s Twas a Sunny Day, I was pleased to join the event and to hear the author and Arne’s daughter, Rebecca, speak about Arne Roosman and his eventful life.
This book is an interesting read with some old family photographs and plenty of his more recent sketches. Arne and his family’s journey to freedom during the war was quite different from many other Estonians. Since Arne’s grandmother had German ancestry, they were able to escape from the Soviets to Germany earlier on. However, this was fraught with danger, as they needed to pretend to be allied with Germany at some border crossings, but also allied with Russia at other border crossings. Arne recounts how his parents travelled with photographs that included people whose faces were scratched out. This was so they could say to either the Russian or the German border control officers, “these were acquaintances, but now are bad people, so we took them out.”
