Chapter One is based on my first return trip to Estonia in 1982 after my father and I had fled the country 38 years before in the midst of World War II leaving my mother and sister behind. Hence, it sets the stage for the remainder of the book. In the chapter I provide a broad overview, based on personal observations and intense interactions with my sister and other remaining relatives, of the horrendous conditions and repression they had to endure under Soviet rule.
Chapter Two details the constant tyranny people had to endure just to live their everyday lives behind the Iron Curtain, as I observed those conditions in my subsequent trips to Estonia. I also present the reader intermittently significant historical facts and settings without distracting them from the continuous dialogue and events taking place at the moment.
Chapter Three is a short chapter describing the history and significance of the National Festival of Song that takes place every five years and dates back to 1869. Essentially, singing has sustained Estonia’s culture and traditions since it originally lost its independence in 1227 after fighting a war against the Germans and the Danes for 20 years.
Chapter Four describes the nightly terror that my family and thousands of other Estonian families had to endure during the first Soviet occupation from 1940 to 1941. The chapter is based on my own and my sister’s recollections as we visited the home and the surrounding area where we lived during those never forgotten days.
Chapter Five is based on a clandestine trip that my sister and I took with the help of a relative to the southeastern part of Estonia where my father’s half of our extended family has lived for at least the past 300 years. This was also the area where my family lived between 1941 and 1944. It is here where the war came to our doorstep and we were lucky to have barely escaped the clutches of the Red Army.
Chapter Six depicts much of the family intrigue surrounding the events leading to my hasty departure with my father from Estonia on September 19 th, 1944, two days before the Soviets occupied the capital city of Tallinn. The chapter also provides the reader much of the political and military struggle of the Estonian underground in trying to regain the nation’s independence and hold back the Communist Forces.
Chapter Seven is devoted to portraying what it was like for both sides of our separated family to struggle in order to stay alive until the end of the war. The chapter details the close calls my sister had with the Red Army and the run-ins my father and I had with the Nazi authorities in Germany and Austria. In addition, historical and political issues are discussed from a macro perspective as they related to personal encounters.
Chapter Eight provides a personal account of life as a displaced person or DP in refugee camps in West Germany after the war. I also include a vivid account of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration’s or UNRRA’s efforts to feed, clothe, and shelter millions of refugees and eventually find them new homelands.
Chapter Nine describes the adventures that my father and I lived through working on board an old tramp steamer officially registered in Panama. He was the radio operator and I was a deckboy. The chapter gives a good account of the conditions after World War II in Europe, the Middle East and North America ( Canada).
Chapter Ten presents personal details in trying to find a sponsor in the United States through UNRRA who was willing to offer my father a job so that we could emigrate to America. It also includes our initial encounters with the North American culture and its way of life. Conversely, as we found a new homeland my sister and other Estonians were treated like foreigners in their own country by the Soviet occupiers.
Chapter Eleven gives a personal account of the struggle of the Estonian people in trying to save their 10,000 year old culture and language. This was made increasingly difficult by the increased deliberate efforts by the Soviet authorities to russify the tiny nation.
Chapter Twelve chronicles my trials and tribulations and those of my sister in trying to get the Soviets to allow her to visit my family in the United States in 1985. We eventually succeeded and she spent an entire month with us in addition to accompanying me on visits to numerous well known cities and sites around the Western Sates.
The Epilogue brings the reader up to date as to what has transpired in Estonia and America with my sister and my family since the end of the 1980’s. It also provides some theoretical perspectives in how to bring the vicious cycle of war and peace to an end around the world.