The Fate of Estonian Army Staff Officers

THE FATE OF ESTONIAN ARMY STAFF OFFICERS

The following article appeared in Harju Elu (No. 85 [6698J]), a local newspaper of northern Estonia, on July 23, 1988.

What Happened to the Staff Officers of the Republic of Estonia?

"Recently, there has been discussion in the press about the fate of those thousands of Polish officers who were murdered at Katyn after crossing into Soviet territory while retreating from the German offensive. But there is still no word on the fate of the staff officers of the Republic of Estonia," writes Oskar Milikov in a letter to our editorial staff. Thirty-eight years ago, Oskar Milikov crossed paths with a former captain in the Estonian Navy. The captain, his fellow prisoner, recounted for him the story told here, as recorded in writing by Oskar Milikov.

We know that following Estonia's annexation to the Soviet Union, the armed forces of the Republic of Estonia were· absorbed into the Red Army. Since the Soviet powers did not regard the officer corps of bourgeois Estonia as being particularly trustworthy, they decided, in the face of impending war, to liquidate most of them. The excuse used to isolate them was to call them to Vyarska camp for training in June 1941. Nearly 250 officers were taken there.

When the German forces conquered the territory of Estonia, concern at home mounted over the fate of the Estonian officers arrested in Vyarska. The "Estonian Relief Committee" put together a commission and sent it to Vyarska and even out beyond Pskov to seek out clues and information from local residents about what had become of our officers. It was presumed that they had been exterminated. The commission even sought possible burial places, but it finally returned without any information on the fate of the missing officers.

I spent 1945 to 1954 in detention at one of the nearly 30 prison camps in the Norilsk district. Each one contained between 3,000 and 4,000 prisoners (some of whom were at forced labor, with sentences of 20 or 25 years). In 1950, fate brought me together with captain Ennopere, formerly of the Estonian Navy, in the camp hospital. He told me all about what they'd done to the 246 Estonian officers arrested in Vyarska in 1941.

The officers destined for "training" had been taken to a holding area (presumably in Petseri). At their quarters, they were taken one by one to a room, in which each man was met with a cocked weapon pointed at him. He was then relieved of his own weapons and ordered to lie face down next to the others who had entered before him. With all the officers thus disarmed, they were taken in groups to cattle cars and sent off to Siberia. There had been no questioning and no trial.

On the way, at some railway junction, they were caught in a bombing raid by German planes. For the entire trip, they endured the same hardships as any regular prisoner. The train took them to Krasnoyarsk. There the men were walked through the town to the harbor. Since they were dressed in Estonian Army uniforms unfamiliar to the local populace, they were thought to be enemy soldiers or perhaps prisoners of war, and the people shouted things like "fascist bloodhounds" at the column of our men. Little boys pelted them with stones.

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From Krasnoyarsk, a ship took them north up the Yenisey to Dudinka, where they (like all subsequent prisoners) continued by narrow-gauge railway 120 km to Norilsk, which at that time was considered to be no more than a settlement. It had been settled only a few years earlier. Norilsk is surrounded by mountains containing rich deposits of coal, copper ore, aluminum, cobalt and precious metals. Miners were needed here - - cheap labor in the form of prisoners. Even at that time, in 1941, that area contained a number of prison camps.

The arrested officers were divided into 40-man brigades and sent to build roads. Working in the permafrost was incredibly difficult, since they lacked machinery and their workdays were 10 hours long. It was hard to withstand the hunger as well as the temperatures of minus 30-40° C (lacking special clothing, naturally). They complained to the camp commander that they would all soon die in these conditions. Cynically, the commander replied that that is precisely why they had been brought here.

Here in the camp they were finally "questioned" and "sentenced." According to captain Ennopere, the questioning was carried out rather brutally. If one man refused to testify against another as required, he was sent to a cold, stone-floored cell in his underwear to "think about it."

For the most part, Estonians were given 10-year sentences. Latvian staff officers, who were hauled to Norilsk like our men had been, were given 8 years; for the Lithuanians, 5 years was considered sufficient.

Of those 246 Estonian officers who were deported to Siberia in 1941, the older and therefore higher- ranking men were the ones to die in these harsh circumstances. Occasionally, however, a camp authority would enter the barracks at night and simply point out someone to follow him. These men never returned. According to outside sources, these men were taken to Norilsk prison and shot. This group included colonel Haljaste, commander of the pioneer battalion of the Republic of Estonia. Nearly 100 officers were executed in this manner. Of the rest, most died within a few years of the cold, hunger, and brutal working conditions. When I arrived there in 1945, it was estimated that fewer than 20 of them still survived. The survivors included primarily those men who had managed to get easier work because of their special skills: the engineers and construction specialists; even a pharmacist and a musician. Some of them even managed to return to their homeland after 1953.

Isn't it high time to bring up the subject of these Estonian men who perished innocently in inhuman conditions as victims of Stalinism?