Day 2
The first official day of this tour in Tallinn, Estonia, has been an emotional journey, undoubtedly magnified by very little sleep due to jet lag, as I learn details of the history and annihilation of the Estonian Jews. In short, migration brought Jews eastward over the centuries from Germany to Estonia, the most northern of the tri-country Baltic area, although its Jewish population was never great. Estonia control was tossed between Denmark, Sweden, Germany, and Russia until it became independent post WWI and for a brief time enjoyed its sovereignty until the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between the ambitious Nazi German government and Stalin’s crew gave it to the Soviet Union (see the map of the divisi below) . This lasted until Germany broke the agreement and invaded Estonia in 1940 in Operation Barbarossa, which was greeted by many Estonians as a relief from the Soviet oppression. However the Nazi war machine soon implemented its “final solution” and cleaned up the country’s 4000 unwanted Jews and it was declared “Juden Frei” early in the war history. However, the majority were given a warning in advance by a perceptive Jew active in the Zionist movement and fled before the remaining 1000 were taken prisoner and shot.
Our first visit today was to the only synagogue now in this country, after the destruction of the main temple in Tallinn from Soviet bombing in 1945. It a small modern very beautifully designed and executed facility built around 2007 next to the Jewish Community Center on the outskirts of the Tallinn area. There are 100 seats in the sanctuary downstairs for praying men and 60 upstairs for the religious women. Our host from the temple indicated that the Chabad sect was a sustaining presence financially and rabbinically. I asked whether the sanctuary was ever filled and the very kind gentlemen, born locally in 1945 whose parents survived by fleeing into Russia before the Nazi invasion, replied, “only on Yom Kippur”.
There is also a very small Jewish museum next door displaying interesting photographs of past Jewish life and inhabitants in Tallinn in the Estonian language and in Russian but with no English translation nearby. I asked the curator why they chose Russian as the second language and he replied that at the time they set up the display there were a lot of Russian visitors but they’re in the process of redoing the signing. The photographs showed a lively Jewish presence in the area, self-contained but integrated into the local life. Now scattered and broken, the Jews that remain here are a small group of about 2000, some having returned after WWII, and a larger number of whom emigrated from Russia.
The curator pointed us a photograph of the Estonian passport of a woman whose parents had converted to Lutherans and who did not even know of her Jewish origins but who was nevertheless rounded up and killed by the Nazis or their Estonian collaborators who welcomed the Germans as saviors. There are a lot more complicated twists and turns of this country’s history.
There was also an extremely personal exhibit of Art done by artists related to or part of the October 7 kidnappings and murders in Israel — overwhelming in its message of creative human beings overrun by the destruction and emotional toll of war. I wish I could show you all of it.
After a fabulous lunch at a restaurant in the old town (special vegan dishes were kindly prepared for me, delicious cauliflower with a basil sauce and then a really wonderful mushroom risotto with a vegan brownie and home made raspberry sorbet for desert). I am eating and feeling well.
The last stop for the day was about an hour drive into the forests of Estonia which cover about 50% of its land mass. This was a strong emotional experience as we entered into the Klooga site to where Jews from Latvia and Lithuania were shipped to a work camp and then in 1941 were sent from there to concentration camps ahead of the Soviet invasion. However, on September 19, one week before the Soviet troops arrived to liberate the country, the remaining 2000 Jews were systematically shot in the forest. There are 2 monuments there as well as signage displaying information of the history of the camp and its final acts of murder in a very moving way. Our group paid homages to those who lost their lives there and I think we were all emotionally impacted by being at the site, by ourselves, with only the whispers of the trees and the memories of those who lost their lives there.
