Asbury Park Press_Book tells of Soviet crime against Estonians (June 16)

16.06.2008

LAKEWOOD — Sixty-seven years ago this weekend, Estonia residents were dragged from their beds, shepherded to the train station and shipped to a Siberian labor camp by the Soviet Red Army. To those who lived in the small Baltic country of Estonia at the time, it is an event known as the Great Deportation.

On Sunday morning, a memorial service for those victimized by the Great Deportation was held at the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Holy Ghost.

One of the invited guests was Tiina Ets, the translator of "We Shall Live in Heaven,'' a first-hand memoir written by Pastor Harri Haamer on his days spent at a Soviet slave labor camp.

Ets, whose husband, Agu, is a graduate of Lakewood High School, is a professional interpreter. She spent more than four years translating Haamer's chronicle of life in a Siberian camp. It was published this year by the Tartu Academy of Theology. "People need to know what happened at these camps,'' said Ets, who was an interpreter for three U.S. presidents in meetings with Estonian officials. "I didn't even know what happened. Everyone who had family involved has a story or stories similar to some told in the book.'' Ets said that after long periods of working on the translation, she would need to take a break.  "It was disgusting what those in the (camps) were forced to do,'' she said.  The original version, written in Russian, has been sanitized a bit due to the coarse language used in telling the prisoners' stories, Ets said.

For nearly 50 years, Estonia was part of the Soviet bloc. The republic on the Baltic Sea is south of Finland and a few miles west of St. Petersburg, Russia.

During World War II, Estonia was occupied and annexed first by the Soviet Union and then by Nazi Germany. In 1944, as the Allies started to win the war, it was re-occupied by the Soviet Union.

The Rev. Thomas Vaga, the pastor of the church and a longtime advocate on issues related to Estonia, said hundreds of thousands of people were affected by the deportations. "In one night, over 10,000 men, women and children were taken from their homes, literally out of bed, by armed Red soldiers,'' Vaga said.  Vaga, like most Estonians of the era, had family or friends who were taken to Gulags. That's why every year in the second week of June, parishioners come together at the church to remember those events of the early 1940s.  An estimated 300 native Estonians live in Ocean County, according to Vaga.

The deportation is one of the first childhood memories for Juhan Simonson, a Lakewood resident and the chairman of the Estonian American Historical Commission. He was only 8 years old at the time and was living in a small village called Elva when he saw neighbors at a nearby farm being transported to a cattle car at the train station.

"I went to a path in the woods and saw all the people in the cattle car as it went by at around sunset,'' Simonson said. "You could tell they weren't going to come back to Estonia. It was one of the first things I remember.'' Simonson said he has been trying to write a book about those events as well.

Ets said she is translating another book on the Great Deportation, this one based on a woman's life. It's due to be published later this year.

Estonia officially regained its independence in 1991. Its 2007 population was about 1.34 million.

Keith Ruscitti: (732) 557-5748 or kruscitti@app.com