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EPISODE 2: POSTED 28 MAY 2010

The pleasures of Baltic life ... and some uninvited Russian guests

So there I was, beginning the next phase of my life — as a student at the Trades School in Ventspils. I shared an attic at 11 Stradnieku Iela (street), not far from the school, with Arthur Sterns, another student from my native Puze. Unfortunately, he was to perish a few years later as a result of the war.

Our parents supplied us with food and firewood and we settled in. As part of the deal, the landlady cooked one hot meal a day from the food supplied, and we looked after ourselves for breakfast and dinner. I had virtually no money in my pocket any more. The discipline of the school demanded that right from the first day everybody had to be in uniform, and my previous summer’s earnings went on that and a cake of soap. I might have been poor, but I was quite contented in my new dream world.

I took my studies very seriously. For the first few weeks I spent all my free time studying because I really didn’t know what was expected. During the first term we had to sit for several mini-tests in each subject. To my surprise, I could get through them in half the allocated time, and by the end of term I had established myself as the top student in a class of 38. It wasn’t something I had aimed for but I was pleased that it happened. For my efforts I was presented with a book called Inside the Atom. Perhaps the reason I remember the title is that I tried very hard to understand it without much success.

From a very early age I had been used to heavy physical work. Now, at the age of 17, for the first time I was free from it. It didn’t worry me the least being away from my parents. I enjoyed the easy life and felt extremely happy. It also didn’t matter that the room I shared with Arthur was very small, had a sloping wall on one side, and that there was only a very small window.

There was just enough room for two single beds and a small table. Only one of us could do work at the table; the other one had to sit on a chair in the corner or on the bed. There was also a small oven where I baked pancakes. There was no electricity in the house. The power lines were only about a metre and a half from the roof but our landlord didn’t believe in such “evil things” as electricity, which would be “bad for the eyes”. We did our work by the light of a small kerosene lamp, but kerosene was rationed and in short supply ... the first wartime measure of our Government.

The Baltic Sea was only a short distance away and I loved to listen to the noise of the waves, which became rather loud on windy days. At night the blinking light of the Ventspils Lighthouse shone in our window. Many years later the blinking lights of Norah Head Lighthouse near our holiday home on the New South Wales Central Coast reminded me of my earlier days in Ventspils.

I loved to wander the streets of Ventspils and listen to the noises of the city and of my own steps on the cobblestones. Almost all of Ventspils’ streets were paved with cobblestones. On the smaller streets they were often uneven and any traffic — mostly horse-drawn sulkies with steel-rimmed wheels — could be heard from a long distance.

On one such walk with two of my schoolfriends, we passed a hotel and one of my mates said he wanted to drop a few coins in the poker machine. This was my first experience with the “one-armed bandits” and I was fascinated by them. My mate fed a few coins, got couple of small falls, soon lost them and said quits. But now I wanted to try my hand. My father had the previous day delivered a food parcel and given me a 10 Lat note (I guess about $20) that was to last for me till Christmas, about two months away. I changed the note into silver and began to feed the machine. In no time half of my capital was gone and there was only a little left from the second half. I suddenly realised that there was little chance of getting my money back but every chance that I would be left penniless if I continued to feed the hungry beast. I cut my losses and promised myself never to go near the monsters again.

While the rest of Europe was in the throes of war we still lived in what appeared a small island of paradise, but there were reminders that the war wasn’t far from our borders ... the thousands of Polish refugees fleeing Hitler and Stalin, and also our uninvited guests, the Russian soldiers. Some of the older Latvians thought it wouldn’t be so bad because Russia was a rich country and that it wouldn’t be as bad as in World War 1 when the German occupying army confiscated their food. How wrong they were!

Many imported goods were in short supply. Petrol, kerosene and rubber goods were rationed but we had ample supplies of food and other locally produced goods. We would joke about our hungry Russian “guests”, who were buying everything they could see, but our little country was rich enough for all of us to satisfy our needs.

I also found a source of income. Across the River Venta there was a large camp established for the Russian officers, wives and children. They were supplied from our forests with firewood which had been cut into 75-centimetre lengths — far too long for use in their stoves. It was up to them to cut the logs into thirds. The Russians didn’t have the tools nor the experience to do the job, and they had employed some older local men who weren’t much better. It took them a long time to get through each cubic metre of firewood and a fee was established to reasonably compensate for their time.

I heard about this woodcutting business and immediately sensed a goldmine. I was a more than handy woodcutter and could also gullet (set the teeth) and sharpen a crosscut saw. I borrowed a rusty old double-ended crosscut saw from my landlord, cleaned it up, gulleted and sharpened it and engaged one of my schoolmates, Adolfs Boitmanis, as a partner.

We travelled by punt across the River Venta — one of the largest and deepest rivers in Latvia, deep enough to accommodate ships of more than 10,000 tonnes, even larger ones at its mouth — and went to the Russian camp and offered our services. We were full of apprehension, not knowing what to expect there. Our Russian language didn’t go much further than “dobra dien” (“good day”) but we soon made ourselves understood by sign language. As it turned out, we were very welcome there, since the previous contractors had left, asking for more money. But we weren't greedy. We could see that the money offered was good enough.

Adolf was a head shorter than I but also strongly built and had done his share of woodcutting before. We went to work and showed the Russian women what two Latvian boys could do. In no time at all the first cubic metre of firewood was sawn, chopped and stacked neatly. We were ready for the next customer but, despite their rather shabby appearance, the Russian women were obviously quick calculators. They soon realised that at the rate we were working, our hourly earnings would be more than double the normal wage. They generously offered to cut the going price by half. That didn’t impress us at all and we wished them good luck with their next woodcutters. So ended our adventures in the Russian camp.

Actually, the opportunities to earn some money while attending the school were rather limited. We spent six full days at school each week — three in the classroom and three in the school’s modern workshop doing practical work with machines and hand tools. Each summer we were sent out to different local firms for more practical work, for which we did get paid.

I soon settled into my new surroundings and soon found that there was no need to spend all my free time with the books. I could retain my top place in the class just the same and my self-confidence grew enormously. There were entertainments in Ventspils that I’d never had the opportunity to experience before: the cinemas (actually forbidden for us “schoolkids”), the sports stadium, ice skating in the winter. A large sports field almost next door to where I lived was flooded with water as soon as the weather became cold enough and provided a large expanse for ice skating. During the evenings the area was floodlit and loudspeakers blared a mix of latest hits and classical music to entice customers. This carnival atmosphere prevailed, weather permitting, right through the winter. If you didn’t have your own skates they could be hired for a small fee.

As we celebrated New Year 1940 it still seemed we were living undisturbed in our little piece of paradise. The Russians had their four bases in Latvia and at Ventspils we could see them in ever-increasing numbers, but for the most part they kept to themselves. Any fraternisation with the local populace was strictly forbidden. They seemed afraid to talk to us but they did do their best to empty our stores of goods. Most importantly, they didn’t interfere with the running of the country. Stalin and Hitler had just shaken on an “everlasting pact of friendship” and Hitler had requested all Germans living in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia to return home. We could only applaud. After 700 years we saw the last of our former oppressors gone.

We didn’t know, of course, that the two dictators had already sealed our fate and it was only a matter when not if. In the spring of 1940 I had successfully completed my first year at Trades School and was posted to the district Department of Main Roads to help with machinery maintenance. Our President, Karlis Ulmanis, sent a message to all Latvians to purchase as soon as possible a good pair of work boots. It sounded strange but many responded to this call. A few days later we all realised the meaning of his call. On 24 June 1940, masses of Russian tanks rolled over the eastern borders of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia on the pretext that there had been provocation from our border guards. Our “liberators” showed us their true faces, and much of what ensued was for the consumption for the gullible West.

Elections were held and the result was 99.8 per cent in favour of including the three Baltic republics in the Soviet Union. I was 18 years old and had to take part in those “free” elections. There was only one candidate in each electoral district ... a name we had never heard before. Some naive local candidates who tried to put their names up rested in prison instead. At the polling booths you were given a ballot paper with the “yes” already filled in. Anyone silly enough to ask questions about the “no” papers was given the answer that they were not currently available and their names entered on a list. The same happened to those who made any comments on the ballot paper. As we learned later, their fate was sealed and free trip to Siberia assured.

There was no nonsense in these “free” elections. Even though computers weren’t available, the Soviets could calculate and announce the outcome almost immediately. This same sort of a charade was repeated for the election of our Parliament. As we learned many years later, most Western countries had swallowed the Soviet bait and accepted the election results as the true expression of the will of the people. Even as late as in 1989, reputable English textbooks informed their readers that in 1940 the people in the Baltic States had overwhelmingly voted for their inclusion in the Soviet Union.

The summer of 1940 saw many strange things happening in our country. Meetings and parades were organised almost non-stop in all towns and villages but participation by the public was anything but encouraging. To our great surprise, many local Jews became very active in the new and strange Soviet organisations and committees. The problem of non-participation by other local Latvians was soon solved. Attendance to street marches and meetings became compulsory. From factories, offices, schools, everyone — without exemptions — had to take part. And they all had to shout, on command: “Long live our Teacher, Scientist, Genius, Josef Vissarionovich Stalin.” And those “smart arses” who made jokes about these charades soon found themselves in jail or were simply disappeared.

As part of my school curriculum I was required to spend the summer school holidays on practical work. As a first-year apprentice I was assigned to the Department of Main Roads on road graders. Our team consisted of a senior mechanic and myself. We had to use and maintain a large road grader on an allocated area far away from Ventspils and my father’s farm. We towed a two-berth caravan as our living quarters, and went back home on our pushbikes, leaving the grader and the caravan on site, only every third or fourth week. These were great times. We did our own cooking, went mushrooming, made lots of new friends. Every day was different. We received no newspapers, had no radio, and didn’t care one bit about politics. This was a remote corner of Latvia.

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IMAGE: The rather amazing photograph on the left was taken in front of Arnold's family home in Puze, near Ventspils, on 24 June 1940, the day that Stalin's army moved into Latvia — and the day Arnold's older sister Lily was married. They could apparently hear the gunfire but obviously refused to let that interfere with a bloody good party.

Arnold is circled top centre. Immediately below him are the bridal couple — Lily, who had two children but died when they were quite young (slipping on ice while fetching water from the well and drowning), and Ernests Danis (who's still living in Puze).

One of their children, Karlis Danis, became one of Latvia's outstanding sculptors, but died quite young from TB. There are plenty of examples of his work in Latvian galleries ... and in Ernest's yard.

Immediately below Lily and Ernests are Arnold's younger sisters, Alma (left) and Irma. Alma died just a couple of days before Arnold first returned to Latvia about eight years ago. Irma is still alive and living on her daughter Vija's farm.

Circled, to the left of the bridal couple, are Fricis Rozentals and Lizeta Rozentals (nee Sternbergs), Arnolds's parents. Standing alone, on the extreme left, is  Jans Sternbergs (Lizeta's father).