Estonia’s Museum of the Occupations in Recent History will be officially opened and dedicated June 27. The Museum covers the years 1940 through 1991, including the first Soviet occupation, the German occupation and the second Soviet occupation of Estonia.
Established in 1998, the Kistler-Ritso Estonian Foundation has collected thousands of items, conducted research and produced films and printed materials. Among the video materials are several hundred interviews with key
individuals of the occupation periods. This work has been invaluable in preserving the testimonies of aging eyewitnesses and survivors. Of the ten people shown in the first film, made in 1999, half have already died.
The entrance to the exhibits lies between two locomotives marking the two totalitarian occupations – one emblazoned with a red star, the other with a swastika. The occupation was much more than the thousands of arrests, long
confinements in inhumane conditions and the deportation of tens of thousands of people to the slave labor camps of the Gulag. It was a cataclysm for everyone who lived in
Estonia. The trains symbolize the way the stable democratic existence of an entire nation was transferred to a completely alien set of tracks by an illegal foreign power. Although not physically shipped off to Siberia, hundreds of thousands of people were cut off from a
normal existence, deprived of their human and civil rights and the opportunity to make plans for tomorrow. Tomorrow was determined by the terrorist gang that had seized absolute power.
Another important symbol in the exhibit area is an open boat which reached Sweden packed with refugees from Estonia. Access to a normal, free society was cut off by the Soviets who did everything possible to consolidate their
power. In addition to well-known propaganda tricks of telling the people every day that they live in the best possible country, the Soviets also did not let their captives go outside the country to see for themselves whether these claims were true or not. Nevertheless, thousands of desperate people tried to escape Communist terror using similar small boats. They fled hoping and believing that after Western nations implemented the principles of the Atlantic Charter they could soon return home once more to a free and democratic Estonia.
The Director of the Museum and its Foundation is Heiki Ahonen, a human rights activist, former political prisoner and former head of the Estonian Service of Radio Free Europe. Mr. Ahonen explains: “The recent past is an
emotionally charged and difficult topic for many who lived through it themselves. Our museum, which attempts to portray this period objectively and factually, draws a kind of line between the recent past and the present. We cannot and must not forget the past. But we also cannot continue to live in the past. The past is now put into the museum as a lesson and as a kind of guarantee that never again will this kind of repression of basic rights and mass terror take place. It will help us to concentrate on building a better tomorrow, free of the complexes and fears of the past.”
Among the attendees at tomorrow’s ceremony will be Mr. and Mrs. Walter Kistler of Seattle, Washington through whose generosity the construction of the Museum and the work of its Foundation have been financed. Olga Kistler, herself a former political refugee from Soviet -occupied Estonia, will mark her 83rd birthday in Tallinn the day before the opening. Other individuals involved in bringing this important project to completion have travelled to Estonia as well. Unfortunately one of the people closely involved from the beginning, Mr. Vello Karuks, passed away recently. His important contribution will be commemorated at the ceremony.
The
www.okupatsioon.ee web page is part of the Museum, and as such will constitute the interactive base for the Museum after June 27.
For further information, please contact Heiki Ahonen, Chairman of the Executive Committee, Kistler-Ritso Estonian Foundation at +37 251-83223.
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