Ylo-Vesse Velvelt's Life Story and Surviving the 'Czech Hell'

When is the War Over? Ylo-Vesse Velvelt’s Life Story and Surviving the ‘Czech Hell’ Tiina Ann Kirss 1. Introduction: Czech Hell and its Survivors For young Estonian men mobilized into the Nazi Army in 1944 and shipped off to Germany as the second Soviet occupation advanced north and west in the third week of September 1944, the war was far from over. For most, a stint at the Neuhammer military training camp in Poland preceded a long, erratic march to the eastern front, in full consciousness of being cannon fodder, and accompanied by a concentrated first-hand look at war atrocities and civilian bombings. Months later, the following spring, these and other men in Estonian units fighting in Silesia followed orders to retreat. What followed came to be referred to by the newly-minted word kablutamine, a pell-mell, disorganized fleeing westwards, as fast as pos- sible and mostly on foot. For those in the units headed by legendary figures of Paul Maitla1 and Alfons Rebane,2 who had survived one or more Red Army encirclements, the road in May 1945 led through the ‘Czech Hell’. This appalling experience, the culmination of all the harrowing experiences of the preceding months was the outcome of a gamble that the Americans would surely reach Prague before the Russians, thus guaran- teeing freedom and safe passage west. The Russians got to Prague first and Czech partisans and civilians over the ensuing days and weeks com- mitted random acts of retaliatory brutality against the occupying German army. The perpetrators of these brutal acts, including summary executions, made no allowances or acts of clemency to affect the fate of Estonians mobilized into the army that had occupied their homeland. For those marching through the ‘Czech Hell’, the meanings of confusion and helplessness became radicalized. In this paper I will focus on one narrative of remembering the Czech Hell, the life story of Ylo-Vesse Velvelt (born 1926), both in its published (edited) and unedited forms.3 Compared to other Estonian war stories, and other published Czech Hell narratives, it is a modestly told, moderately jovial tale, yet it narrates a passage through the middle of the cauldron. Czech Hell is one framed chapter of Velvelt’s war journey, which lasted exactly one year from the day he shipped off to Germany to his return home to Saaremaa; it is not, however, the story’s dramatic climax. The war is one chapter of a comprehensive account spanning an entire life, most of which was spent in the homeland; the ‘war chapter’ is both set 366 When is the War Over? apart and framed by a holistic apologia pro vita sua that weaves it into a larger pattern. Velvelt’s story allows analytical focus on the periodization and density of a life narrative, and on the perceived agency of the teller. Survival of the Czech Hell was indeed a gamble, a matter of fortunate timing, the discernment of a ‘time window’, and the strategic concealment or revelation of one’s national identity, which with luck and language competence, could be a bargaining chip for one’s life if not freedom. Vel- velt’s story allows the examination of how this agency is narrated in retro- spect. Finally, like many other war stories, and in its very modesty, Vel- velt’s survival story subordinates individual heroism to male bonding: he emerges from the Czech Hell alive because a friend knew how to speak Russian. In the larger history of World War II, the Czech Hell was one local event among many others of its kind, episodes of entrapment, escape, and local chaos which occurred against a canvas of large-scale movements of troops and front lines (Made, 2008, 225). It was a transition, an effect of timing and geography, a composite of the complicated, desperate trajecto- ries of an army in retreat, and the added chaos of an ‘interregnum’ between regimes, releasing both outbursts of euphoria greeting supposed ‘liberation’ and a spate of random as well as concerted acts of revenge. Heino Susi, a ‘Finnish Boy’ who went on to survive the Czech Hell com- pares this drastic culmination of the war journey to the interval between Soviet and Nazi occupations in the summer of 1941. As both Susi (1985) and Lauri Vaska (2004) recount in their memoirs, for Estonian men in the German army, the Czech Hell was one more case of the overall predica- ment of being caught in the middle in ‘someone else’s war’. How long the Czech Hell lasted was variable – from a few days, to some weeks, to months of work, wandering, or imprisonment. In his fictionalized memoir, Heino Taremäe (1921–2000), who was fortunate enough to have time on his side, crossed the Elbe at Melnik before the Soviet troops arrived and blocked the bridge, and moved rapidly west via Chemnitz. He reflects on this stubborn foot-march, once his protagonist has reached safety in the West: ‘There they were, in the little room of a hostel in Heidelberg. They had kept on going indefinitely, westward and westward. Had they finally arrived? What would happen next? All at once the thought seemed very foreign to Mart that tomorrow morning they would not have to get up and go anywhere. Life had proceeded according to a definite plan, consisting of three main parts: walking, obtaining food, and looking for a place to sleep.’ (Taremäe, 1996, 123.) The crucial factor of timing in the passage through the Czech Hell be- comes clearer if one sketches a more detailed chronology of events. On .

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