My son Martin and I decided that we would visit the Museum of Occupations that had been built in Tallinn since my last visit to Estonia. The funding for this modern looking building had come from a wealthy Estonian woman - Olga Kistler-Ritso - who had fled the country during the Second World War.

Unfortunately we had the misfortune of getting a surly Russian taxi driver that spoke very little Estonian and almost no English. He dropped us off at the museum but couldn’t or wouldn’t tell us that it was closed Mondays. We ended up wandering around the old city for the rest of the day to kill time.

At one point I wanted to go to a famous café named “Maiasmokk” but couldn’t remember exactly where it was. I asked one of the hostesses of a fancy restaurant who happened to be standing outside at the door. It turned out that she didn’t speak Estonian and before I could switch over to English one of the local women walked by, pointed and said “You speak Estonian. The café is over that way, and you can’t miss it”. The place hadn’t changed since my last visit and the food was as great as I remembered it. The coffee though is so strong you can almost stand a spoon up in it.

Another place that hadn’t changed was Oleviste Church which is home to a Baptist congregation. Martin wanted to climb the landmark high tower which he done during his first visit in 1994. This time, instead of being handed the keys by the pastor, he had to line up and buy a ticket with the other tourists. While he was working his way up the stairs I joked to the ticket seller my son had grumbled that this visit he had to pay. The ticket taker, a pleasant older woman laughed and said we should have told her right away. She was not joking. There was no lineup so we talked a bit and I found out that Pastor Puusaag was in the country attending a family funeral. Later I talked to the other custodian who told me that many years ago a relative had once taken them up to the top of the tower to view the apparatus that the KGB had installed there as part of the ubiquitous “Big Brother is listening” campaign so common to totalitarian regimes.

On my last day in Tallinn I reckoned that I would have enough time to visit the museum even though it opened late at 11:00 am. While I was waiting I noticed that the headquarters of the Estonian armed forces was right next door. That building looked quite nice but next to it was a structure that still had that drab typical Soviet appearance of crumble and peeling paint. It may take some time yet to remove the last visible vestiges of communism.

The first exhibit I literally bumped into was an old wooden fishing boat that the museum had obtained from somewhere in Sweden. This was one of those many small craft that towards the end of the war had carried Estonians and other Balts that were escaping from the advancing Red Horde to safety in Sweden. The boat held special meaning for me since my parents had barely survived that trip in a storm-tossed October Baltic Sea.

The rest of the rather small museum consisted of various exhibits. To my mind the most important were several television monitors that continuously played narratives and old film footage about Estonia during the war years when the country was successively occupied by the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and then the Soviet Union again. Several people that had lived through these horrific events were interviewed, including the last surviving Estonian recipient of Nazi Germany’s highest military decoration known as the “Knight’s Cross”.

I listened to and watched the narrative given by Mr. Harald Nugiseks who as a very young non-commissioned officer was awarded this medal for bravery on the battlefield. There were only four of these medals awarded to Estonians. Mr. Nugiseks must have been very brave and exceptional indeed since it was usually only awarded to senior officers and glamorous ace fighter pilots - not lowly “grunts”. The other three Estonian recipients were all field grade officers.

The presentation showed footage of Mr. Nugiseks being awarded his medal as he lay in a hospital bed recovering from his wounds. The thought that went through my mind was that here were all the senior Estonian Nazis or collaborators decorating a young soldier. All were subsequently named as being criminally responsible for atrocities committed by the Nazis during their brutal occupation that lasted more than three years. How might this scene be interpreted by people unfamiliar with Estonia’s tragic and convoluted history - such as North American tourists from the numerous large cruise ships tied up in the harbor? Perhaps the question was academic since the museum, even though it was situated on the edge of the bustling historic old city tourist area, was almost empty.

Before leaving to catch my plane I purchased a silver medal struck in commemoration of the 60 anniversary of the Estonian Diaspora. It should make a nice present for my daughter. Hopefully, when she looks at it she will be reminded of what her grandparents went through so that that we could grow up in a free country.

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