Okay - to keep you intrigued :lol: I'll post a bit more of Mamma's story:
The fishermen were there already and told the locals that the boat had gotten lost at sea. But when they were rescued and came on shore, the fishermen wanted their money - so Anna Silis gave her gold watch and Mamma her gold ring. Mamma later saw a woman around the camp wearing her ring!! But didn’t want to cause any trouble and left it alone.
Mamma couldn’t remember how many people exactly were on the boat. (The Swedes say 20 people were on the boat). She remembers these people: (They were all Latvians on the boat.)
3 - Silis family, Alfreds, Anna, and their younger son Uldis
3 - Mamma, Tete and our older sister Inta.
1 - Nulands - a single man.
4 - Flamis family - husband, wife and 2 small children--Mr. Flamis worked in the clock shop in Augenskalna market after Latvia’s second freedom in 1991. Mamma actually ran into him when she first started shopping at the market after she had moved back to Latvia in 2002. His wife had another baby (girl) in Sweden, but he divorced her and went to Canada, returning after Independence.
1 - a single young man; he went around telling everyone at the D.P. (Displaced People’s) camp that they should go back to Latvia when Stalin asked for his citizens back! No one wanted to go with him - he did go back. Will never know whether he was sent to Siberia…
1 – Ziguards Martinsons - a Latvian army guy, whom Tete knew; was carrying a pistol; he’s the one that saw the ship and shot his pistol into the air, but nothing happened. He jumped on the boat at the last minute in Sikrags.
1 - Velta Breikopf - a young, single lady, from Sikrags - spoke the dialect “Liv”, lived in the region and communicated with the fishermen about the boat. (Liv is a different Latvian dialect, very hard to understand). She bunked in the same barracks section with Nulands, Tete and Mamma. Velta went to Canada; Mamma saw something about her in the Latvian paper, but never wrote; and then Velta moved to Australia and heard nothing more about her.
2 - Eglitis - wife and husband - eventually went to Canada, then to Australia. Wrote to each other while they lived in Canada and lost track of them when they moved to Australia.
That’s sixteen people, but Mamma believes there were 3 or 4 more people, but can’t remember. She said I should have asked YEARS before and she would have remembered ALL their names!! After all she is 90!!
Unfortunately, my older sister Inta dies approximately 2 hours before they reach shore…. Had they not gotten off course, had they gotten there earlier… maybe… she would have been saved… Doesn’t remember much about the burial, but does remember her shoes were completed soaked with the soles and leather falling apart. So she received new shoes for the funeral. On October 26th was the burial - (Took awhile getting this date - I don’t believe she wanted to remember or not talk about it, but she finally did recall the date and seemed okay about talking about her.) Inta died on the crossing from pneumonia and is buried on Visby, Gotland in a special memorial site with others who perished during this time.
The inscription translated by Google - Swedish to English, well you decide! Here’s Google’s translation:
On October 26, 1944 buried a Latvian refugee child: Inta G, daughter of Romuls G,
Inta was born 6 April 1944. Died October 24 at Faro lighthouse.
On tombstone is the following texts:
In the times of war
They looked for the Gotland shore
for the storm in his homeland
And the rest are in peace
1944
Here’s what it says in Swedish, sorry no Swedish typewriter, so no dots over the o’s and the rest of those thingys!
Den 26 Oktober 1944 begravdes ett lettiskt flykting barn: Inta G, dotter till Romuls G, Inta foddes 6 april 1944. Dog den 24 Oktober vid Faro fyr.
Pa gravstenen finns foljande test:
Iodesmattad ofredstid
De sokte la vid Gotlands strand
For stormen i sitt fosterland
Och vila har i fried
1944
Why this panicked flight from the Soviet Red Army’s advance in all the eastern European Countries? Why did millions of people abandon everything they had to flee their native Countries on very short notice? One must be acquainted with a bit of European and Latvian History in order to understand the near automatic Latvian people’s response to the Soviet Army’s second invasion of Latvia near the end of World War II. The recollection of the most recent Soviet invasion of WWII in the “Terrible Year” of 1940-1941 was fresh in every Latvian’s memory.
June 14th (a solemn day for all Latvians everywhere!)
June 14, 1941, marks the Baltic’s’ equivalent to Adolf Hitler’s Holocaust – Josef Stalin’s deportation of Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians and others to Siberian prisons and labor camps. This story of exploitation, starvation, terror and death of hundreds of thousands is largely untold. Stalin’s purges on that single night was an effective tool to terrify the citizens of the Soviet Union, especially those in occupied territories. One best behave! Any misstep could result in a penalty, often an official 25-year sentence to be served in a labor camp in Siberia. The reality of this sentence, however, was that it was often a death sentence in disguise. People were packed in like sardines in a can. The only relief came after someone’s death because the corpse was thrown out by the railroad tracks. The journey to Trim in Siberia was one of thousands of miles and many months. Upon arrival, a new hell awaited the deportees: forced labor for a single portion of dry bread. The story of community and survival is horrific and told in graphic detail. Some were asked to be a snitch with respect to the community. Some refused, but certainly others agreed. There lies the beauty of Stalin’s campaign of terror: always a snitch – somewhere, anywhere!
Our forefathers had lived in the area for countless generations and had managed to maintain their culture despite various earlier attempts by neighboring powers to subdue them. Most of the Soviet’s European neighbors had learned to be very afraid of the callous brutality of the totalitarian communist regime during the first decades of the 20th century. When it became obvious that the Soviet Army invasion could not be stopped, many did not hesitate to save themselves and their families into exile in order to continue life and the political fight for their homeland’s freedom from afar.
Sweden was definitely not expecting SO many people escaping and coming to their shores! They had to build ‘emergency’ barracks for the coming winter of 1944. Mamma remembers they were wood barracks - 6 beds in each separate little room, with a corridor down the middle. They received donated clothes, as theirs were all water logged. From Swedish Red Cross records that I have found later they were at one time at the Baltic camp Säfsjöström on November 14, 1944.
Living in Sweden - on Gotland in the wooden barracks - later the Swedes would send everyone to the mainland. They move from the coast to inland of Gotland. She says they were in quite a few different D.P. (Displaced Persons) camps. She couldn’t remember how many camps - maybe three or four. One of these camps in November of 1944 was the Baltic camp called Säfsjöström. People without children lived in bad conditions; from 1944 to 1945 went from one camp to another - now she remembers as many as 4 or 5 different camps. The Silis family stayed in an old palace and the Swedes built the barracks for the single families. When Tete and Berzins were on “Fire Duty” - putting wood on to fuel heat for the cold nights - they would always forget! They were always busy playing cards and everyone froze on those nights! So people knew to try and get extra blankets when their “fire duty” was due!
In 1945, Tete gets a job in Gislov. With two other Latvian Vet students and three Estonians cleaning stables and milking cows. Silis and Tete left this job, to cut wood; then to a peat moss job - only prison workers did this work, but the pay was good! Raking up peat moss, Tete wrote to some younger Latvian guys at the D.P. camps and told them of the ‘good’ paying job! Mamma was working at a rubber factory, making tennis shoes, and putting the glue on, with six other Latvian ladies. They could only do 30-40 shoes, but their quota should have been 130 shoes.
next comes - she remembers her 25th birthday...
I took this interview Octber, 2010 after my Mamma turned 90 years old. All the kids were there to help her celebrate in Riga. In the story, Tete is my Father, that's what we called him in Latvian. 
Here's the beginning of my Mamma's story. I shall blank out their names and others, if necessary!
