While Russia recently celebrated the 60th anniversary of their (?) defeat of Nazism (a plague which they helped create with the Molotov-Ribbendrop Pact), 89 year old Eduard Kolga retraced his steps in 2004 to a prisoner camp, GULAG 113, where he was forcibly kept during World War II.
Eduard Kolga was forced against his will into Soviet mobilization in the summer of 1941, by threat of death against his family. Instead of being compelled to take up arms and go to war Eduard Kolga, along with 50,000 of his fellows, was sent to sub-arctic Russia, near the city of Kotlas, to where only 30,000 of the deportees arrived. Then during the first three months, one third of them died from hunger, disease or frostbite.
Eduard Kolga spent two years in the Communist hellhole, finally escaping through Soviet lines during the battle of Velikie Luki. He made his way back home to Estonia. From there, with the Soviets occupying Estonia behind him he and his family fled, finally arriving in Canada. His story resonates as it is similar to the experiences suffered by thousands upon thousands of Baltic and eastern Europeans citizens fleeing the Red terror.
His grandson Marcus Kolga, a journalist, who received total funding from the OMNI Film Initiatives program, tells Eduard Kolga's tale. "This program pays all of the costs of the film, and saves the filmmaker from having to fund the film a bit at a time," said Madeline Ziniak, Vice-President, and Station Manager of Omni TV.
The telefilm is scheduled to air on OMNI-1, Saturday, September 17th at 10:00 pm in Estonian and on Saturday, November 12th at 7:00 pm in English.
