Estonian

The Way it Was

Exiled at four years of age to Siberia by Soviet authorities after the occupation of Estonia during World War II, in their process of what is now called ethnic cleansing, the author finds herself in the bitter harshness of the barren and frigid region, where she and her mother, along with many others, were destined for extermination. Witness to the suffering and death of helpless women and children, including her younger brother, nearly losing her mother to encephalitis, and herself going through hunger and disease, she miraculously survives.

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War in the Woods

With the Soviet reoccupation after World War II, Estonians faced a choice of submitting to Communist puppets or trying to survive in the traditional refuge of their forests while waiting for help from the West which never came. Those who chose the second course, Estonia's "Forest Brothers," mounted an armed resistance which, for more than a decade, seriously challenged Soviet rule. This is their story, told for the first time by sources within Estonia.

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