A Latvian Journey To Freedom

 
  • 2015-07-31
  • Pete Zvanitajs, Ventspils, LATVIA

Aleksanders Blokmanis

The church was quiet, even though a few people had remained behind to light candles. I was there with my relatives, 77-year-old Dedzis Broders and his wife Ilga. We had come in search of my great grandfather.

His name was Aleksanders Blokmanis. He had once been a priest, here, at the 114-year-old Orthodox Church of St Nicholas in Ventspils. He died in 1954. That’s all I knew about him, that and what he looked like.

Now, holding one of the few photographs we had of him, we approached the local priest and Dedzis asked whether he was familiar with the name Blokmanis. We were directed to a woman standing near the altar. Elena was writing a history of churches in the area and was able to tell us that my great grandfather had indeed served at St Nicholas, and at another church nearby, in the countryside. The rural church had been burned to the ground during World War II, but Elena knew where Aleksanders Blokmanis was buried.

Before we left the church, Ilga lit a candle, and I lit a candle, and we said a prayer. I prayed for my great grandfather, hoping that he was at peace.

That was my first day in Latvia—I was completing a journey which had taken me to the land of my parents and their parents before them.

WHERE THE JOURNEY BEGAN

In 1940, the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were torn apart by the dictates of war. More than one hundred thousand men, women and children in Latvia were deported to gulags (the forced labour camps) and resettlement in Siberia. Half of them died. One hundred and twenty-five thousand Latvians fled the country and became refugees.

Valda Emilija Nodolskis

Five years later, in March 1945, as Latvia lay still covered in snow, Valda Nodolskis decided to make her own bid for freedom. She was 31 years old. In the middle of the night she took her two young sons, one of them four years old (called Valdemars) and the other (Juris) just two years old, to a beach north of Ventspils. She stood there in the freezing dark with at least fifty other people, all of them waiting for a boat that would take them across the Baltic Sea to Gotland in Sweden.

Valda’s husband, Antons, came with her to the shore to say goodbye to his wife and children. He wasn’t going with them. He had decided to stay behind and do what he could to help more Latvians escape.

At 4 am, rowboats ferried fifty-seven refugees from the shore to a small fishing vessel. The boat was shot at by tracer bullets even while people were being loaded onto it. Among the children lifted onto the boat under gunfire were the two boys, Valdemars and Juris—boys who would one day become my father and my uncle. Valda Nodolskis was my grandmother.

Antons did not make it out of Latvia. He was caught, sent to a gulag in Siberia and never saw Valda or his sons again. (Nor met me, his grandson.)

In 1951, in Canada, Valda married again and her name changed to Valda Zvanitajs. Her second husband, Vilis Zvanitajs, was also Latvian.

Edgars Aleksanders Broders

Edgars Broders married Nina Blokmanis in 1935. In 1940 he built a house for the family in Riga, the capital of Latvia. When he was last there it was 1944 and he was by himself. In his writings he describes his final moments in his home. He writes that he went into the living room and said a prayer. He prayed that one day he and his family would return to fill the house with more happy memories. That day never came.

In 1944, Edgars and Nina Broders also escaped on a boat out of Ventspils. They had two children, two little girls. Inta was eight years old and Dace was just a toddler.

As their boat pulled away from the shore toward an uncertain future, the people on board started singing the Latvian national anthem, Dievs, svē tī Latviju (God bless Latvia). It was their farewell to the country and those who remained.

Years later, Edgars had managed to build a new life, a good life, for himself and his family in Canada. His younger daughter, Dace, became my mother. Edgars Broders was my grandfather and Nina my grandmother.

Dedzis Andrejs Broders

Edgars had a cousin called Karlis and he in turn had a son, Dedzis. In 1941 Dedzis was just three years old. He and his parents were arrested and sent to the gulags of Siberia. Karlis was separated from his wife and son and was shot. Dedzis and his mother, Irma, were forced to resettle east of Krasnoyarsk.

They lived there in abysmal conditions until Dedzis was 18 when, in 1956, they were allowed to return to Latvia.

More than thirty years later, following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the country began its renewal and the Latvian government decided to rebuild the iconic national opera house in Riga. Edgars, by then 85 years old, sent a donation from his home in Canada and his name was inscribed on the back of a seat in the theatre.

In 1995, Dedzis and his wife paid a visit to the opera house to see it in its restored glory. As he walked through the auditorium, Dedzis suddenly noticed the name ‘Edgars Broders’ on one of the seats. He stopped, and looked. Could this be his father’s cousin? But it couldn’t be. Edgars and all his family had perished long ago; he was sure of it.

Dedzis went to the opera house office, and the people there gave him the address of a Mr Edgars Broders in Toronto; and he wrote a letter.

Edgars Aleksanders Broders

In Canada, my grandfather read the letter and realised that this must be his cousin’s son. But how was this possible? He had always believed that Karlis and all his family were dead. Dedzis had been just a little child the last time he had seen him.

Fifty-six years after that last meeting, Edgars was reunited with his family from Latvia when, in 1997, Dedzis and Ilga travelled to Canada.

MY VIEW FROM THE SHORE

Dedzis lives in Riga, and while I was in Latvia he took me to see Edgars’ house. It is still standing but it’s unoccupied and in a state of disrepair. The gates to the yard are padlocked.

On that Sunday, after leaving the Church of St Nicholas in Ventspils, Dedzis, Ilga and I went to the nearby shore of the Baltic Sea. It is a beautiful, wide sandy stretch of dunes. I stood at the water’s edge and looked out across the grey expanse of sea—my grandparents and parents had entrusted their lives to the sea, not knowing where or how their journey would end. The future was only a hope.

I was born in Canada, as was my sister, Karin. My wife is Canadian. Her mother, Nga Nguyen, came to Canada as a refugee from Vietnam—one of the hundreds of thousands of boat people of the 1970s. Her story is another journey. But I, my wife, our children—we have known only freedom and security. We don’t know what it is to have our future hidden from us.

At the shore, I knelt down and put some white sand in a bag to take home with me. I added some of the smooth stones that dot the beach. All of my grandparents are gone now and none of them ever returned to Latvia. But I hope they know that, seventy years later, a member of the family made it back to that same stretch of coast and that the family is together again.

 
 

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