Folklore as a source for creating exile identity among Latvian Displaced Persons in post-World War II Germany

ABSTRACT

This article draws on archival and print materials produced by Latvian Displaced Persons during the years they lived in UNRRA refugee camps after World War II. Its focus is on the ‘how’ of their cultural production and identity formation in camps that were established to expedite repatriation but became instead contexts in which Latvians as social actors opposed the goals of authoritative others to endow experience with their own textual meanings. This essay demonstrates how they recontextualized a variety of folklore genres as flexible and powerful resources for addressing their existential crisis and for solidifying exile as the basis for living purposefully off the territory of ‘home.’

KEYWORDS:

• World War II
• UNRRA
• refugee camps
• exile identity
• folklore
• cultural production

Acknowledgments

This work has been supported by the European Social Fund within the project ‘Cultures within a Culture: Politics and Poetics of Border Narratives.’(Nr. 1DP/1.1.1.2.0/13/APIA/VIAA/042).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See Mandelbaum (1973) on ‘turnings,’ but also Carr (1986, 90), who writes about narrative responses when ‘things go missing.’ Hoffman (1999) describes turnings as ‘an upheaval of self.’ See also Rozītis (2005, 69–72) who invokes such words as ‘destruction,’ ‘brutal break,’ ‘cleft’ to describe fictional depictions of the loss of home for Latvians.

2. Smith calls his book about Russian aristocrats Former People (2012).

3. Lane contends that half of the 240,000 Latvians who fled were ‘caught by the Red Army and failed to reach the West’ (2004, 145).

4. They included 700,000 from Poland, 200,000 from the Baltic countries, 100,000 from Yugoslavia, 100,000 Polish Jews, and 50,000 from Ukraine (Danys 1986, 43).

5. Shore (2013, 31) quotes the words of Vaclav Havel about life in Soviet-era Czechoslovakia to make the same point about human proclivities. The line between victim and oppressor, Havel wrote, ‘runs de facto through each person, for everyone in his or her own way is both a victim and a supporter of the system.’

6. Earlier volumes continue to prove informative: Woodbridge (1950), Proudfoot (1956), Stoessinger (1956), and Vernant (1953) as well as memoirs by Hulme (1953), Klemme (1949), Dickens (1947), and McClelland (1997), all of whom worked for UNRRA and other aid organizations.

7. See also Daukste-Silasproģe (2002) and Rozītis (2005) on the themes in Latvian literature produced in the DP camps.

8. Atskabarga (8/2/45, 6) cites a joke that circulated in Latvia during the Soviet occupation of 1940–1941: ‘During the Bolshevik time, a young man approaches the newspaper kiosk in Riga.’ “Tell me,” he says, “can I get a newspaper from you?” The sales clerk answers tersely, using the names of Soviet newspapers to comment on current conditions: “Darbs” [work] we’ve got. “Atpūta” [leisure]) we do not. “Padomju Latvija” [Soviet Latvia] we won’t ever have, but “Ciņa” [struggle] we’ll have later.’

9. In addition to residence camps, a number of other specialty centers were established throughout Germany. In transit centers, refugees were assembled for the purpose of selection, movement, and emigration. From repatriation centers, they were returned to their countries of origin; in resettlement processing centers, refugees were presented to various selection teams. In staging centers, those who were fully processed were readied for emigration through embarkation centers (Holborn 1956, 197).

10. In addition to the newsletters cited in the references, the following also informed this essay: Atskabarga, Ausma, Brīvības saule, Bulta, Latvijas vārds, Ilustrētais vārds, Lāčplēsis, Latviešu ziņas, Latvis, Mērbekas ceļinieks, Mītnes viesis, Pie svētavota, Saucējs, Tāli taki, Trimda, Trimdinieku gaitas.

11. According to Žīgure, 366 clergy, 2,535 writers and artists, 2,827 teachers, and 300 academics lived in the camps (2012, 223, 238).

12. For sources that I cite repeatedly, a short-hand list had been added just below the summary, above.

13. Butter also served practical needs. Wyman describes how a family from Latvia used butter to purchase train tickets and food (1998, 33). Zariņš (2013) writes about how 16 kg of butter brought from Latvia made refugee life easier for his family. Years later in exile skits, references to Latvia’s production of butter produced outbursts of laughter.

14. References to the term are ubiquitous in exile lore (most recently, for example, see Zariņš 2013).

15. Williams quotes Dante on the exile mythos of past happiness: ‘I sympathize with those who, languishing in exile, revisit their native land only in their dreams’ (1970, 142).

16. ‘Rehabilitation’ referred primarily to rebuilding infrastructures in devastated lands, attending to physical and mental health needs, English language instruction, and vocational retraining.

17. Hulme (1953) looks beyond stereotypes to the individuals behind them, as do Wilson (1947) and McClelland (1997) in their accounts of relief work.

18. See Lane (2004, 156) on the belief in and disappointment about the Atlantic Charter among refugees.

19. The study by Latvian American historian Andrew Ezergailis (1996) concludes, as do many others, that the circumstances surrounding Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania require further scholarly attention. See also Plakans (1995, 143–53); Buttar (2013, 48–49, 103–56); and Hitchcock (2008, 143), who writes about ‘willing partners’ in German-occupied countries where Jews were identified with the Soviet communist regime. Wyman makes the same point, but distinguishes among levels and types of collaboration, noting that ‘a helpless person confronting an armed enemy often saw no alternative but to cooperate’ (1998, 180–81) and cautions those who are ‘two generations removed’ from the events to ‘tread with care when condemning or excusing.’ On the other hand, in one of only three references to Latvian DPs and without further elaboration, Mather states categorically that beginning with the German occupation of 1941, ‘the Latvians and Estonians collaborated equally enthusiastically in exterminating the Jewish population’ (1992, 190). Lane (2004) reaches many standard conclusions but also cites numerous interviews with ex-soldiers.

20. For a counter view, expressed in satire, see Rirdāns (1949).

21. See Shepherd on the ‘Skryning’ (screening) process that sought to identify collaborators among those applying for UNRRA care (2011, 203–28); see also Elliott (1982, esp. 7–30, 133–64).

22. The quote has been reprinted without comment from a May 1945 issue of the bulletin of the Latvian Embassy in Washington, thus leaving it up to individual readers to conclude that ‘the news’ in this instance must be understood as propaganda. For the many controversies connected to Valdmanis, see Bassler (2000).

23. Snyder points out that the Germans arrived just weeks later to establish their occupation (1941–1944) and fully exploited the experience of the Soviet occupation in recruitment efforts, taking care to seek out families who had suffered under Soviet rule as well as those who had resisted or collaborated with the Soviets (2010, 196). The Soviet and German occupations, he concludes, were not only painful and divisive but also created risks and temptations among those who had carried out the policies and faced the consequences of each occupying power (2010, 189–93).

24. The majority of the Latvians who fled to Sweden were intellectuals and leading social democrats. Their more liberal views clashed with the conservative Latvians ascending to power in Germany as representatives of UNRRA-sanctioned camp committees. The political divergences are traditionalized in an anecdote recorded in an oral history interview in 1980 about the return to Latvia from exile in Switzerland of Jānis Rainis, a Latvian social democratic. Both his supporters and members of the Ulmanis government were at the train station to welcome him home: ‘Rainis climbed down from the railway car, he stopped and looked, saw both the government officials and his party members. Nu, he started to walk toward his party, not toward the government. Nu, the government had to return home with their noses to the ground’ (Carpenter 1980, 135–38).

25. See Williams (1970, 144) and Shepherd (2011, 276, 441) on the issue of political conflicts among refugees.

26. See Rozītis (2005) for the fictional representation of collaboration in novels about the DP camps.

27. On riddle tales, see Bauman (2004, 35).

28. Smugājs writes about many German surnames changed to ‘beautiful Latvian ones’ to avoid the suspicion of authorities (1979, 12, 88, 91).

29. Alfred Rosenberg was a Baltic German who became an influential ideologue of the Nazi Party as head of the Reich Ministry to the Occupied Eastern Territories. He was sentenced to death at Nuremberg as a war criminal and was executed on 16 October 1946.

30. According to Gilbert, they constituted the largest contingent of former soldiers who had served the German military (2013, 109). Gilbert also notes that Germans added the word ‘volunteer’ to the Latvian Legion name to circumvent international law forbidding the recruitment of occupied populations. This move made it difficult for UNRRA and IRO officials to distinguish between forced conscription and voluntary service (110–111).

31. Some have referred to refugees as ‘windbags,’ while nineteenth-century political writer and exile Alexander Herzen wrote in derogatory terms about exile pettiness, wounded vanity, and their endless talk about the same recriminations and issues (Williams 1970, 145, 167–68).

32. Shortly before being elected Latvia’s president, Canadian psychologist Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga gave a speech in Latvia which was reported on the first page of the newspaper Laiks under the title ‘Tādi nu mēs esam, un tur nekā nevar darīt’ [That’s the kind of people we are and there’s nothing we can do about it] (19 November 1994). In Latvia her provocative speech produced both outrage and enthusiasm largely because of her account about occupants of an apartment building in Riga failing to screw in a light bulb in the lobby of the building, a story she used to point to the lingering Soviet legacy of passivity and learned helplessness evident among Latvian citizens.

33. ‘My friends and I, when the war was ending in Germany, we were collecting maps and everything, you know. We are going to walk back to Latvia. We were all prepared to go back. The war ended: “Now let’s go back and start living again”’ (original in English, Cooper 1978 [Valdmanis]).

34. References to Eižens Finks (1885–1958) continue to appear in the Latvian newspaper Laiks, where he is remembered as a legendary fortune teller, especially popular among affluent residents of Riga. Legends grew up about him in his lifetime. According to one, during a lavish party at the home of Emīlija Benjāmiņš, the wife of the leading newspaper publisher, Finks predicted to Emīlija that she would die of starvation – ‘lying on bare wooden boards’ without a pillow under her head. Guests regarded his prophecy as a bad joke. In June 1941, Emīlija was deported to Siberia. In some accounts, Finks was present at her death, having also been deported. When asked why he did not save himself, he reportedly answered that one cannot escape one’s fate, but that some time ago he had purchased warm felt boots. Accessed 10/8/2013: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Em%C4%ABlija_Benjami%C5%86a and http://lv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ei%BEens_Finks

35. A variant uses the folk phrase Skaisti vārdi (beautiful words) as a headline (TZ 3/29/47).

36. Decades later accounts of the Swedish repatriation continued to reverberate among Latvian exiles. This excerpt was recorded in English in 1978 in Columbus, Indiana:

They were not very many, but there was a group of soldiers and some officers. I think there was pressure from Russia to the Swedish Government and the king was involved. They say he was against it, but the prime minister wanted to be friendly with the Russians. They gave them out. Some committed suicide – they were on hunger strikes also. They carried them to Russian ships. Perhaps some survived, went back to their families, but some disappeared and nobody knows about them. (Cooper 1978 [Asars])

37. Actual number put at 167 by Lamberts (1955).

38. See Wyman (1998, 60, 80–81, 82) for similar stories from other nationality groups.

39. According to Ozoliņš (1954, 307) and others, between 2,000 and 3,000 returned voluntarily to Latvia.

40. A report from the Lithuanian Bulletin of 18 July 1946 asserted that Red Army officers ‘broke into’ the mess hall and tried unsuccessfully to persuade the people to return to Lithuania. When the officer realized that his exhortations had failed, ‘he vilified the unwilling and in a most disgraceful manner finally told them: “Those who refuse to be repatriated will be forcibly removed. You fascist swine will be brought by force into our camps, from which the exit is short and expeditious.”’

41. Alfons Noviks, director of the NKVD, was regarded by many DPs as the notorious overseer of Soviet terror.

42. In 1948, DPs were finally allowed to organize political demonstrations. Latvians joined other DPs to march under such banners as ‘American Friends: We Are Fighting like Lincoln against Slavery’ (DP Albums http://www.dpalbums.lv/lat/comments.php?id=277, accessed early July 2014).

43. See Lane (2004, 163) on the standardized questions asked in screenings. Screenings were often conducted in English even though few refugees spoke English and interpreters usually were not available. Rumors asserted that Soviet and pro-Soviet personnel served as screeners, were ignorant about the history and politics of Eastern Europe and about Soviet methods. Ironically, this ignorance proved to be the ‘saving grace’ for collaborators and war criminals who were adept in concealing their pasts, using false ID papers, leading protests, and refusals to submit to screenings, organizing petitions.

44. Latvians often refer to the deportations as ‘Baigais gads.’ Danys refers to the deportations in Lithuania simply as ‘the June deportations’ (1986, 9). While Baigais gads entered folk vocabulary in Latvia, it is a term contaminated by its usage in Nazi propaganda and as the title of a book published during the German occupation about Jewish complicity in the 1941 deportations.

45. The self-descriptor ‘cultured people’ was consistently and hilariously satirized by the Latvian musical group Čikāgas piecīši.

46. This encounter with filthy shelters continues to circulate as memory, for example, in this account recorded in 1978:

The Germans [had] built barracks for their war prisoners, for the Russians, but now they were released and [the barracks were] empty, full of lice, dirty, leaking roofs. We slept there on dirty straw on the floor, with an umbrella over our heads …. We lived there in those barracks in one room, four families, on bunk beds for half a year like that. (Cooper 1978 [Asars])

47. See Rozītis (2005) for the depiction of cultural activity in the novels about life in the camps.

48. Rozītis points to novels that depict the rivalry and one-upmanship resulting from cultural activity as well as the arguments over who ‘has the right to choose’ what will be produced (2005, 119). Jaunsudrabiņš (1951, 226) ironizes about the self-importance of the interacting individuals.

49. The title, along with a brief excerpt from Jaunsudrabiņš’ original, was used in a booklet issued by the Latvian Central Committee in Germany for use in DP schools. Piemini Latviju was reprinted in 1990 by Zvaigzne in Riga during the glasnost era.

50. Williams claims that despair typically turns exiles ‘from politics to writing’ and he quotes the words of a seventeenth-century expatriate, ‘Banished men find very little business beside books’ (1970, 144). Saucējs, a newsletter published by POWs, prints a four-page article called ‘Thoughts about Books,’ which identifies books as a source of strength and unity (8/25/45). Even so, it was a well acknowledged reality that books published in the camps were often artistically inferior and DPs usually talked more about shoes, socks, calories, and cigarettes than about books.

51. See Carpenter (1992) where a young Latvian exile takes on the role of a runas vīrs to challenge his elders.

52. Turner (1981) on social drama; Malkki (1995) on the mythohistorical turn.

53. A headline in Trimda reads ‘The Spirit of Song Saved the Nation’ (7/7/45).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Social Fund [‘Cultures within a Culture: Politics and Poetics’]. The archival research in Germany was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Notes on contributors

Inta Gale Carpenter

Inta Gale Carpenter is a native ethnographer whose research focuses on folklore as a form of expressive culture in contemporary life. She retired from the Indiana University Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology as an Associate Research Scholar in 2010. Her publications are based on fieldwork with Latvians in the U.S., Latvia, Germany, Brazil, and Siberia.