Määritsa (Hindriku) battle site Battle site

Hindriku Farm is situated in the village of Haamaste in Võru County.

On 1 April 1946 the farm was the site of an operation carried out by Soviet security forces targeting the Forest Brothers. The skirmish, lasting eight hours and involving around 150 Soviet agents and nine people holed up on the farm, resulted in the deaths of all of the Forest Brothers and everyone living on the farm. When the house caught fire, the Forest Brothers hoisted the Estonian flag from the window and remained indoors.

A monument stands next to the renovated foundations of the farmhouse, where the national flag is flown all year round. There is an information board in three languages and a bench here.

Although the Soviet regime sought to stop any information spreading about the Forest Brothers, while spreading their own slanderous rumours, the local collaborators who had accompanied the security forces there were so shocked by what they saw that the facts of the matter became widely known among the locals. Being burnt alive while trapped in a surrounded farmhouse and fighting under the national flag inspired a scene in the 1989 Tallinnfilm feature Äratus. Once the flames had died down, the Soviet troops searched the ruins. They found an address to the people of Estonia, written by one of the leaders of the Forest Brothers who died in the fire, Avo Pruus, hidden in the chimney flue. The text of the address found its way into today's internal security report based on a written copy. The reason why the Soviet troops searched the ruins became clear in 2013 when archaeologists uncovered a collection of gold rings from the site that had been hidden by the Forest Brothers.