The next life

Left: my family as refugees in Germany in the summer of 1945.
Right: the Cambodian refugee couple in my home in November 1975.



Estonia, a member of the European Union, is presently debating the issue of accepting refugees from the Middle East and northern Africa.  I wrote an article on the subject that appeared in the weekly Eesti Express, on August 12, 2015.  Following is my translation of the text: 

Wars are the cause of refugees.  Our experience in Estonia serves as an example of the refugee tragedy.  During World War II, my family fled from our home in Tartu to my mother’s parents’ farm in Kõo township in Viljandi county as the battles were moving closer to the city.  Our relatives from Valga came, also to the farm and together we were displaced persons.  When it became clear that the advance of the Red Army into Estonia cannot be stopped, we fled to the West in the fall of 1944, as did tens of thousands other Estonians.

Our family – mother with four children – managed to make it across the Baltic Sea in the midst of war to Germany.  The persistent bombing by the allies had Germany in ruins, but we succeeded in crossing from northeastern Germany, where the ship had docked, to southwestern Germany where lived my father’s relative who had left Estonia with her Baltic German husband when Hitler called the Germans “home” from the Baltic States in 1939. 

When the war ended in the spring of 1945, Germany was divided into four occupation zones by the victorious allies, and the region where we were became part of the American occupation zone.  One of the immediate tasks was to attend to the refugees and by fall of that year, refugee camps were established and we were taken to one.

Millions of people had become displaced persons during the course of World War II and most of them returned home after the war ended.  But the refugees from territories that became part of the Soviet sphere of influence presented a special problem.  Finally, it was decided that the refugees from the Baltic States do not have to return home and gradually opportunities to immigrate to the United Kingdom, the Western Hemisphere or Australia.

We succeeded in immigrating to the USA where we arrived just before Christmas in 1950. I was 13 years old.  My sisters and I started school at the beginning of the new year. We did not know English nor were there any programs to teach English to foreigners.  The teachers were considerate and with their accommodation we became fluent in English by Easter.  My younger sister even forgot Estonian during the two years that we lived in the completely English speaking environment.

Many years later I had a different refugee experience in the US.  It was related to the practice of warring parties withdrawing from a territory and including in the evacuation procedures the local people who had worked with them during the war. At the end of the Vietnam war, hundreds of thousands – mostly politicians, military personnel, and professionals – fled from Indochina and upon arrival in the US were placed in refugee camps.  The media was filled with news of the fall of Saigon in the spring of 1975, showing the panic and people desperate to be evacuated.  I decided to take one of the Vietnamese families in my home and contacted the refugee camp in Texas.

I was contacted in November.  They said that if I’m agreeable a young Cambodian couple is ready to come to my home.  After they had become settled, they told me that they had had other offers, but had decided to accept mine because I had been a war refugee.  There were people in my community who did not approve of refugees, because they take away jobs. In this case, my neighbor had contacts at McDonald’s and the young Cambodian got a part-time job there.  That did not meet with resentment in my community and at Christmas some members gave presents to the young couple.  On the whole, the community was friendly to them.

We spoke in English as much as possible in order for them to make a new home in America. One morning the young woman came to the kitchen and declared, “In my next life I no want to be Cambodian woman”.  She was a smart woman of 27 and when they moved in the spring to Providence, Rhode Island, where a community of Cambodian refugees had settled, she became a cook at the home of a wealthy widow and her husband became the chauffeur.  We continued to stay in touch for years and their story, although very interesting, does not belong in this context.

As long as there are wars there will be refugees and now Estonia is faced with that question.  I live again in my land of birth where I follow the debate over accepting refugees from war-torn countries in the New East and north Africa, and I thought it useful to share my refugee experiences in the hope that it may abate fears.  I think that our country can take about 200 refugees over a two-year period provided we prepare for it carefully and thoroughly.