We abandoned all possessions and belongings. Ties with relatives were severed and for some, these contacts were cut permanently.
A few months shy of my fourth birthday, my memories of leaving were sketchy, but many of the gaps were filled by family stories over the years. My father took me on the pillow-padded handlebars of his bicycle to the boat, hidden in reeds on a beach some seven kilometres away. My mother and grandmother took the family horse and wagon to bring along winter clothes, blankets, etc. Our relatives arrived similarly.
Years later when mail reinstated, we were told that our dog ‘Trulla’ who had run alongside the bicycle to the boat, returned to Käina one day later. The horse took two days.
A few square metres apportioned to us at Saltsjöbaden became our only home.
Arriving in Sweden on a small steamer that had saved us from capsizing in the storm, we were interred in the Saltsjöbaden high school. My grandmother, parents and I were allotted a tiny unit in the school gymnasium. Blankets hanging from ropes criss-crossing over the large gym floor formed our ‘room’.
I wasn’t old enough to understand the significance of our drastically changed conditions. Our large house, beside Käina’s town hall, was also home to other families, a bank office, store, and guest rooms. Plenty of room to roam.
A few square metres apportioned to us at Saltsjöbaden became our only home. The house in Käina was completely destroyed by explosion and fire in the ensuing battle after we left.
Our ‘neighbours’ at Saltsjöbaden had all experienced similar circumstances. Loss of home, family, career, an uncertain future. Admittedly, our small community there, as elsewhere, lived through interpersonal conflicts and disagreements, but its solidarity on issues of survival and freedom was unbreakable.
Our like-mindedness was fed by our expectation our forced self-exile would be short-lived.
My parents said that all felt heartbreak about the immediate past and frustration about an uncontrollable future. We shared the same outrage, pain, and despair. These were all emotions vented outward, not into the community.
The group already had a common history and its accompanying spirit. So community solidarity was not cemented by anger and other negative feelings alone.
Our like-mindedness was fed by our expectation our forced self-exile would be short-lived. Surely the West would see the treachery of a war-time ally and, at the very least, quickly liberate the Baltic states held captive by a murderous regime.
It was a repetitive theme in many speeches. Since my mother had been the legendary scoutmaster’s classmate at Tallinn’s teacher’s seminary, his reasoning was most persuasive.
The physical togetherness that circumstances imposed on us in the pre-Christmas 1944 refugee camp was reflected in a unity of purpose and spirit.
Just ten years later in Canada, as a mentor for me and numerous others, he was always able to focus on positive aspirations. Was it then a false hope he was promoting at Saltsjöbaden? There was no ‘falseness’ about it. He helped us to reject resignation and oppose defeatism for the decades ahead.
The physical togetherness that circumstances imposed on us in the pre-Christmas 1944 refugee camp was reflected in a unity of purpose and spirit. And this was coincidentally also the essence in the credo of Heino’s Lembitu scouts a few years later – “Nagu üks süda ja üks hing”….. “Just as one heart and one mind”.
•••
In pre-Christmas Toronto, are we in danger of trivializing or unnecessarily amplifying the rift(s) in our community? Hurtful comments on social media and in EWR expose how deeply lodged these feelings are.
A more authentic feeling of connectedness cannot be imagined than at Salsjöbaden during Christmas. Decorations were meagre. Our modest Christmas eve meal was enjoyed by displaced victims of aggression. I ate my first orange, ever, at Saltsjöbaden. Santa’s gift was tiny in quantity, but tasty. We didn’t have the luxury of complaining, feuding with someone facing the same fate or wallowing in self-pity.
I can be ridiculed for contrasting 2023 with 1944. But it’s Christmas and blessed are the naive.
