P.A. Suurvõsa, in the Feb. 6th Estonian Life, suggests that Estonians in Canada aren’t refugees and that many came to Canada for fear of being branded as Nazi collaborators.


Estonians obviously were not using persecution in Western Europe as a basis for seeking entrance to North America. But the Estonians’ trek to the west started as refugees seeking safe haven. The life experience of escaping war-ravaged Estonia has been retained as a much more traumatic and vivid memory compared to leaving for Canada from German refugee camps, Sweden and elsewhere. It’s understandable why a self-image of refugee among the first generation of arrivals still survives.

It’s justified. All families who had fled Estonia had a close or distant relative, friend or acquaintance who had been shipped to a concentration camp or shot. Traveling to North America would put greater distance them and Soviet-occupied Estonia where people were imprisoned or killed.

The refugee label has certainly not hurt Estonians’ economic success. Stats Canada indicates that average income for people of Estonian extraction is in the highest brackets of personal incomes.

P.A. Suurvõsa also suggests that some chose to come North America to escape war crimes charges: “Some certainly might have been at risk of being tried for war crimes committed with the Nazis…” That fear did not exist among Estonians. Although 50,000 Estonians, most of whom were forcibly drafted, fought in German units, no battle front personnel were charged in western Europe for being in German uniform. In fact U.S. immigration authorities’ official position maintained that foreigners in front line German battalions were not involved in war crimes. No Estonian, as compared to other nationalities, has ever been indicted in Canada in spite of the fact that a special unit of the federal department of justice has been energetically seeking possible suspects.

Many veterans in Soviet occupied Estonia were brought to trial and sentenced by military tribunals to prison terms in concentration camps. Again, the vast majority were guilty not of war crimes, but of deserting the Red Army and/or fighting against the Soviets, with the Germans.

The KGB was mandated to discredit politically active veterans in the west. The most forceful condemnation of Estonian activists would have been to find evidence of a connection to possible war crimes. The number of Estonians in the west charged in absentia with war crimes by the Soviets was miniscule.

Coincidently P.A. Suurvõsa employs two of the most common designations for Estonians in the west that were used by the KGB disinformation specialists in their numerous publications distributed in the west. They insisted that Estonians were immigrants as opposed to refugees, because there was no necessity to flee a democratic proletarian paradise. They tried to dishonour all Estonian veterans as Nazi collaborators, because how could anyone other than a committed Nazi possibly oppose the liberating Red Army.

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