New generation

Past

The years went by and Latvia was still fighting for their independence. Day by day more people got together and fought for their country. Not only Latvia but also the other Baltic countries.

Exactly fifty years after the Molotov-Ribbentrop-Pact was signed, everyone joined hands throughout the three countries. From Lithuania through Latvia to Estonia on 23 August 1989. Not only did they write history by making the longest and earliest human chains in history, but they also paved their way toward their own independence. It did not take long until Sigrid’s home country was actually her home again. At that moment it seemed like everything would be possible again. Suddenly, these three small countries belonged to themselves again and everyone knew that.

The sun rose again, and finally it looked like it would not leave them in the dark anymore.

Present

My mother spent most of her time with Sigrid, so she knew quite a few things about her past but not nearly enough. Obviously, she did not want to talk about it much. She did talk about the German family that took her in, and she always mentioned how proud she was that she earned German but never Russian. To her last days, she could not speak Russian.

Because of Sigrid’s fascination with Germany and the German language my mother decided to learn German in her school and after her graduation, she decided that she will also study it at university. This was an extremely special connection between her and Sigrid because my mother learned her values from her grandma, and now they were always connected through this other language that nobody else in the family spoke.

Sadly, she started to suffer from dementia which was why she started talking in German. Her flashbacks started to become more frequent, and she kept talking about the war in German. During spring, we visited her. She was incredibly happy to see us, regarding as she knew that she could speak German with us. She explained how the soldiers took her parents away and the way she still has nightmares about it. Furthermore, she talked about that one time when the soldier wanted to keep her away from milking the cow.

I thought it was incredibly surprising that her German was grammatically perfect. When she did not talk about the loss of her family or the soldiers then she talked about how hungry she always was.

Then Covid hit and she needed to go into the hospital. Because of the pandemic, nobody was allowed to visit anybody in the hospital, so she spent her last year in complete isolation. Sigrid kept talking in German, so nobody could help her because they did not know what she was saying.