Forest Daughter Domicella Dwarf (Lucia)

Domicella Pundure is a national partisan who spent more than a month in the Stompaku swamp settlement from February 1945, where about 360 partisans lived at the time, including women, children and the elderly. She got married in 1948, but in 1949 her whole family was deported to Siberia, to the Omsk region. She returned to Latvia in April 1960. The young family bought a house in the then collective farm "Borec", worked in the collective farm's field brigade. When her husband died, Domicella Pundure moved to Balvi in the autumn of 1987. Already retired, she worked in the hotel buffet for a couple of years.

The life story of Domicella Pundur can be read in Sanita Reinsone's book "Meža meitas" (The Daughters of the Forest).

Born on December 1, 1927 in the Kručinova family home in Šķilbēni parish. After completing four grades at the nearby Augstasilas elementary school, Domicella began working on her father's farm.

“My father was a guard during the Free State of Latvia, but during the German occupation he worked in the Šķilbēni police. When the war front crossed again in July-August 1944, we were not at home. The neighbors were local Russians and they persuaded us to leave. We left, but they didn’t go too far, they stayed with relatives here in Balvi. So after a while we drove back.

But my father never left and never lived at home again. At first he didn't show up at all, but then we met him. He didn't show up in Ščilbės anymore. They lived in a small group, only later did they join a larger group. Then my father went to the Stompāku swamp. Later, when the forest brothers gathered more, the Chekists started terrorizing everyone, and when they sent me a summons to go to work in the peat bog, my father took me with him in February 1945. They took me on horseback to Stompāku. I went into the forest with what I had on my back, and that was all. The rosary, yes, I had it with me - it had to be with me. And we went, prayed, and God protected us. Whoever was supposed to fall, fell.

The Stompak forest was not thick, and the camp was not that far from the road. We did not drive on the main road, there you could drive straight through the forests. In winter, when the forest work was done, the roads were already built along the lines. Everyone in the camp was given a name. My father had Irbītis, and I think I had Lucija. Until the fighting started in the camp, we did what we were told in the camp. There was one elder in each bunker, and he was in command. I lived in the bunker with my father. It was not cold in the winter. We had a small stove where we cooked food. The walls were made of logs. They were high enough that you could stand up, and there were bunks where someone slept on top and someone on the bottom. Some bunkers were bigger, some smaller. There were some with more people, some with fewer people. There were also horses. There were three horses by our own bunker. They had huts like that made of spruce branches. They also fell in battle.

In general, there were quite a few women in those Stompaks. There were also children. Small children. …There was even a special bunker where they baked bread. But in general, in each bunker they took care of their own food – wherever they could get it, they went to relatives or to family who had it at home. The food was like from the countryside. As in winter, there was slaughtered pigs, meat, cottage cheese, milk. There was no need to starve… I was told that the bunkers in Stompaks were numbered or that those numbers have now been introduced. Ours was the sixth bunker.

We didn't really walk around the bunkers in the camp and didn't see anyone else. We met others in the camp church and here and there. The church was in the camp itself. My husband and his brother had helped build it. It was such a small bunker, no more than twenty people could fit inside. Catholics came to the church. Services were held every morning. And they even heard confessions there. The priest was from Šķilbėni – Ludvigs Štagars.

About that day when there was a battle on March 2-3, 1945. The shooting started early in the morning. I didn't know what was happening. People were running around the camp. My father's sister and I were in the church. And we just squatted there all day. Later, the wounded began to be brought to us. There were a lot of them. We had a paramedic from Viļaka, Roman. He was our commander. We helped as best we could - we bandaged the wounded, gave them what they needed, and did everything else. There I met my future husband. He was wounded in the leg. And that's when everything started for us.

In general, it was safe in that big camp, but that day of the battle… it was scary. Horror, what a noise there was! We were just scared. After the battle, they were already talking about all sorts of things, but still, you see, our men fought back. The men had all kinds of weapons, there were quite a few of them. The most important person in the camp was Pēteris Supe, but I didn't see him. And then that very evening, we went out. The wounded were taken away on horses. Those of us who were completely, as they say, healthy, all strong, went out. I don't remember how many of us there were, but there weren't many. We wandered through the forest, through the swamp, through the forest. The men had weapons with them, of course. We walked at night. The next evening, we came out to the former Bareca, to the house right on the edge of the forest. They gave us tea to drink. And they probably gave us some bread, because we left completely empty-handed, everything that was in the bunker stayed there.

And then our group broke up. My father and I went home. But he didn’t live at home. And so no one touched me anymore, I didn’t go anywhere to apply or register, I lived in the house. It turns out that I lived in the forest for a month.”

On March 2, 1945, when there were about 300 people in the camp, a unit of Soviet troops attacked the swamp. For almost 24 hours, the forest brothers resisted the enemy's superior force of about 500 people. 28 partisans and 46 Soviet soldiers fell in battle or died from their wounds. The remains of the forest brothers who were killed were displayed in Viļaka and some nearby villages to intimidate the local population.