The importance of memory: Haapsalu moments

Iivi Zajedova, a lecturer at Charles University in Prague, writes that she was still quite young when her mother took her to Haapsalu along with the Narva-based choir she had founded. She writes about how important it is to preserve memory, how she has come to this realisation in her life and how she has acted on it.

I remember my mother telling me in hushed tones about the legend of the White Lady, who could be seen mysteriously moving in the window above the baptismal font in the church at Haapsalu Castle during the August full moon. The story was very special to me, shrouded in mystery. From that point onwards I started to notice other things that were spoken about in similarly hushed tones, and even then with very few words being uttered.

Back in the ’50s, and indeed later than that, you couldn’t speak openly about what had happened in Estonia at the end of World War II. People had hidden themselves and fled from one part of Estonia to another for years. Nowhere was safe. My grandfathers never laid eyes on me; I know little of their fate. I was a curious child, the sort who was constantly asking questions, but the only answer I ever got was, “You’ll find out in due course.” I never did, because those who knew and remembered passed away without telling me.

It was only as an adult that I started looking for answers again. Having founded the Czech-Estonian Club in 1991 and been awarded a scholarship by Masaryk and the Republic of Estonia to study at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1993, I obtained a doctorate at Charles University in Prague which allowed me to study the events of World War II in greater depth – particularly those which took place in the Baltic States. On the invitation of Angela Arraste, I started working on a foreign-Estonian studies project at what was then the Institute of Arts at Tallinn University.

I didn’t know at the time that I would end up working on an EU project entitled ‘European traumatic memory: Women refugees during the 1944 Baltic Escape’. In 2020, Evelin Sennett and I founded the Tammepuu Estonian Club (TEC) to support the network of Estonian communities around the world and to preserve their memory. We submitted the project for it in Estonian, our own language, in 2023, since it’s an official language of the EU. Of the 276 projects submitted from around Europe, only 38 were granted funding – one of which was ours!

The idea of setting up the club came from a need to take a broader approach to the mass exodus from the Baltic States in 1944, which is important because it is part of our shared history and collective memory. The project places particular emphasis on female refugees who managed to hold on to their identities and overcome their trauma during very difficult times.

Haapsalu has had a very special place in the project. Things kicked off right here in early April this year when the KOKK theatre troupe performed Elin Toona’s Childhood Story in Exile by Loone Ots at Läänemaa Upper Secondary School. The play recounts the life during World War II of Elin-Kai Toona Gottschalk, a world-renowned writer from Haapsalu who was awarded the Visnapuu Prize in 2022. The story of poet Ernst Enno’s granddaughter brought the events of 1944 and the woman’s life story to the audience, as reported in Lääne Elu on 13 April.

As part of the same project, a seminar was held in Haapsalu in July with the kind support of TEC partners Ülo Kalm (the director of the Museum of the Coastal Swedes) and the Estonian-Swedish Cultural Government. The seminar focused on the fate of the Coastal Swedes, highlighting the childhood memories of Piret Roberg and the US-based Ilvi Jõe-Cannon from the autumn of 1944. The event was briefly covered in Lääne Elu of 11 July, the same edition providing a more detailed account of events organised in August by another TEC partner, the Estonian Institute of Historical Memory.

Another seminar, this one organised by the Estonian Women’s Studies and Resource Centre, has already been held at Tallinn University as part of the European project. Among forthcoming events, everyone is welcome to attend the TEC series of informative seminars entitled “You don’t want to leave, but you can’t stay” taking place in Tallinn and Tartu in September. Information about them can be found on the TEC website. We’ll be joined by historians, researchers, literary scholars, writers, refugees, psychologists, politicians and members of the Women’s Voluntary Defence Organisation. Anyone unable to attend in person can follow the events live online or view recordings of them on catch-up. The seminar in Tartu will be livestreamed by KirmusTV.

At the end of September, a seminar will be held in Riga under the auspices of another TEC partner, the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia, while early October will see a conference held in Vilnius organised by the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania, which is also a partner to our club.

Those who experienced the exodus first-hand are in the autumn of their lives, so it is high time that we collected their memories. They might only have been children at the time, but they could well recall the stories their parents told them to pass on. This year marks the 80th anniversary of the mass exodus. It’s vital that we preserve the memory of our recent history and gain a better understanding of the repercussions this tragic period has had, and may well continue to have, on subsequent generations – because ‘in due course’ may be too late.

Iivi Zajedova
lecturer at Charles University in Prague