OZ BABY BOOMERS: BOOMERAMA

It has been some 70 years since the invading Bolshevik tanks rumbled over the eastern borders of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia — the result of an agreement between the two dictators and one-time friends, Josef Stalin of the Soviet Union and Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany. They took the advantage of the political and military weaknesses of the West, and, as good friends should, divided the spoils, in this case spheres of influence, between themselves.

The feelings of those most directly affected meant nothing to them. They had the biggest guns and that was all that counted. Breaking agreements and international laws meant nothing to them. They were a law onto themselves and they recognised only one law — that which came out of the barrel of the gun.

At the outset, the Bolsheviks promised not to interfere with our internal affairs. Their intention was to stay in Latvia only for the duration of the war. They didn’t need our territory, they had more than enough themselves (for once they spoke the truth). They promised justice for the “oppressed workers” in our country, but the truth was that all the oppressed workers happened to be in their “workers’ paradise”.

The Bolshevik promises were made to be broken whenever it suited them. We did not have to wait long before feeling the terror that had menaced the people of the Soviet Union since its inception. To the many millions of innocent victims in the Soviet Union were now added many more victims from the occupied Baltic States.

Stalin’s stated objectives were to eliminate what he called “the borzois and kulaks”, but in reality it meant the middle classes and intelligentsia, the more productive portions of the population. In the countryside, the more progressive farmers — those with improved agricultural practices and better organised farms — were expelled with what they could carry in their two hands.

All farmers with holdings exceeding 32 hectares were declared “kulaks”. Similarly, in towns, the small businessmen, the backbone of the system, were declared “borzois” and dealt with in the same fashion. Their houses and farms were occupied by the New Order. A little later these same unfortunate people were transported to Siberia, where most of them perished.

We were astounded to see the rag-tag hordes that invaded our towns and cities, hungry for the goods available in our shops and factories. They thought that this was an exhibition put on by us to impress them. The sad truth was that the Soviet Union, the world’s richest country in natural resources, with seemingly limitless fertile land and inexhaustible mineral deposits, was so badly managed that it could not feed and clothe its inhabitants. And that was during 20 years of peace.

On the 14 June 1941, mass deportations began. Tens of thousands of men, women and children were forced into cattle wagons and deported to Siberia.

The terror began rather quietly. A few prominent citizens disappeared and weren’t heard of again. Squads of KGB were active during the small hours of the mornings, knocking on the doors of their selected victims and giving them just 15 minutes to get dressed and collect the few belongings they could carry.

On the 14 June 1941, mass deportations began. Tens of thousands of men, women and children were forced into cattle wagons and deported to Siberia. There were no accusations of any wrongdoings, no trials — just forced deportation. It is now known that after the trainloads of victims crossed the old Soviet–Latvian border, males were separated from women and children, not to see each other again. They were all transported to the coldest part of the Soviet Union — the permafrost of Siberia — to work as miners or cut timber.

From scant information provided by the lucky ones who managed to escape, it seems that on the average, especially during winter, people could only endure the harsh conditions and work for three to six months. Luckier were those who managed to get jobs as kitchen hands, nurses, etc.

It is not known whether the murder of those no longer capable of work was carried out with the knowledge of higher administration or was purely initiated by local authorities, but many were liquidated in this manner and documented as “shot while trying to escape”. There was no need to bury them. The weather and wild animals took care of the bodies. The remotest parts of the Soviet Union became the final resting places for many millions of innocent victims of the Bolshevik regime.

In June 1941, when Hitler attacked his former friend Stalin and pushed him out of the Baltic States, the local population didn’t exactly receive the new invaders with flowers and kisses. But they were seen as providing a tolerable alternative to the intolerable Bolsheviks. After 12 months of Stalin’s terror, anything, even Hitler, seemed to be a better alternative.

And here was our dilemma. The only friends we had were in the West, but the West was in alliance with our deadliest enemy — the Soviet Union. We were hoping for the impossible — for the Germans to defeat the Bolsheviks in the East, and in turn be defeated in the West by the English and the French. Through no fault of our own we found ourselves in a no-win situation. Much as we detested the Nazis, we could not openly resist them. The alternative was much worse.

Since the war, vast numbers of German war criminals have been tracked down, put on trial and justly punished. At least as many — possibly even more — war criminals on the Bolshevik side escaped punishment and enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle on the Black Sea coast. While Western newspapers have quite rightly continued to remind their readers of the horrors of the Holocaust, only little has been told of Stalin’s terrors.

In 1947 the main Allies — the Soviet Union, France, England and the United States — held joint trials of the leading Nazi war criminals. Sitting in judgment, alongside honourable High Court judges from the US, France and Britain, were Bolshevik judges whose hands were covered in more blood than were the hands of some of those on trial.

From my old family, I am the only one lucky enough to have escaped to the free world. My late father and mother lived in Latvia after the war, along with my two sisters and other relatives. They experienced the full brunt of Stalin’s terror immediately after the war in 1945 and during a second wave in 1949. Most of the adult males from the neighbourhood where I used to live perished in Siberia.

In the late 1980s I received a letter from my youngest sister Irma in which she wrote: “A few months after the war ended in the spring of 1945, Soviet Secret Police units, the KGB, formed a human chain and combed the countryside and towns, taking adult males to a concentration camp for interrogation. Our father was amongst them. After the interrogation most of the men were deported to Siberia. Our father was eventually released — being only a small landholder and having had no connection whatsoever with any political organisations.”

As far as can be ascertained, Stalin’s plans were to disperse and annihilate the smaller nations living on the borders of the Bolshevik empire.

Both my sisters were interrogated and questioned about my whereabouts. They reported that I was either dead or lost somewhere in Germany. My sister Alma spent time in a Soviet concentration camp and contracted TB there. She had one lung removed afterwards and has since died.

Stalin’s terror became even more brutal during his last years. Another mass deportation took place in 1949. As far as can be ascertained, Stalin’s plans were to disperse and annihilate the smaller nations living on the borders of the Bolshevik empire.

During the first few years after the war the Bolsheviks did everything in their power to get hold of those of us who had managed to escape in the free world, to return us to the Soviet Union. That was quite understandable. The quarter of a million people from the Baltic States living in the West were first-hand witnesses to the brutality of the Soviet regime.

When their requests to the Western powers failed to achieve any results, they employed softer tactics to get us back. Stalin’s shadow followed us wherever we went. The KGB obtained our addresses through their spy network and bombarded us with their propaganda material, specially targeting us with false information.

During my first three years in Australia — up to the death of Stalin — I received on a regular basis a Latvian newspaper, specially designed to mislead us about the prevailing conditions in Latvia. Pictures shown in the papers depicted happy and healthy Latvians returning to their families and freely enjoying the life in their fatherland.

The truth was that those naive enough to return never reached their homeland but were transported directly to the labour camps in Siberia, just like the returned Russian POWs and forced labourers who had been “contaminated” while serving their country in occupied Germany after the war. The standard punishment for those who for one or other reason had been in contact with the Western way of life was 10 years imprisonment in Siberia.

US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the UK Prime Minister Winston Spencer Churchill obviously felt at ease with Stalin. They made many important deals — deals involving hundreds of millions of people — without ever seeking the view of those affected.

As a result, the war that was fought to liberate oppressed peoples and nations turned more of them towards slavery and terrorised them. The blood of the millions of soldiers of all nations that had been killed on all fronts during World War Two didn’t pave the way for a better or safer world.

On the contrary. The size of the free world shrank considerably after the war. The attitude of those lucky enough to belong to that shrinking world was “I am alright Jack”. Interestingly, I believe that Roosevelt and Churchill would have been just as comfortable with Adolf Hitler as their ally. The game is called “High Politics” and it is rotten!

NOTE: As mentioned before, that formally finishes Arnold's War, but there's more of the story to come, I'm going to take a few weeks break and will be back mid-January with the first episode of Arnold's War: The Aftermath.