Walking Since Daybreak

Modris Eksteins

According to one of the displays in the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia in Riga 120,000 Latvians fought on the German side in WWII and 110,000 fought on the Russian side. Modris Eksteins quotes slightly different figures but the overall significance of the stat is the same. Here was a miniature Spanish Civil War, brother against brother, son against father, going on in the middle of a greater war. It was ignored then and is ignored now by popular Western accounts of the conflict.

Eksteins' book is a small correction. Walking Since Daybreak tells the story of Latvia, generally, and the Eksteins family in particular, through WWI and WWII. It's told in a very sparse dispassionate style. At one point the Eksteins family farm on the River Lielupe lay, for several hours, precisely between the German and Russian front lines. Near the end of the war the Eksteins escaped the advancing Russians via Estonia, then the islands of the Baltic, and finally onto one of the last steamers to leave the Baltics for the dubious sanctuary of a bombed out Germany. Such incidents are very plainly narrated with the peril of the family's situation needing no extra dramatisation.

The book is also good on the experiences of millions of DPs (Displaced Persons) in camps across Germany between 1945 and 1947. The Eksteins family were among them. The Eksteins fiercely resisted any suggestion of a return to Soviet occupied Latvia and yet no other country wanted them or the millions like them. There is an extraordinary quote in the book from an internal memo from Canadian authorities processing DPs warning that candidates for Canadian citizenship were falsifying their academic records and _removing_ evidence of schooling - so unfavourably were academic qualifications regarded when selecting future Canadian citizens. Eksteins' father, as a Baptist minister, was therefore at a disadvantage. A passage to Canada was, however, finally obtained for the family of four in 1949.

Near the Museum of the Occupation in Riga is the War Museum. Lots of history in Latvia, lots of museums, lots of suffering. Half way between Germany and Russia, geographically, well, if you had the choice you wouldn't choose it. One of the Riga War Museum's less troubling exhibits is a room filled with uniforms donated by Latvians and their descendants serving in other countries. It's a strange set of displays, alongside mannequins dressed as RAF pilots and United States marines there are the uniforms of the Alaskan Park Police, the New South Wales Fire Brigade and the like. Modris Eksteins' excellent book would make a fitting addition, in its own way, to the display.