War baby

Soviet Union occupies the Baltic States in 1940. This was also the year when Aleksander and  Anna Marie were married.

In 1941 Soviet authorities mobilized thousands of Estonian men into their armed forces- including Aleksander.  Anna Marie stays home pregnant.

The same year Nazi Germany occupies Estonia.

In August Anna Marie labor starts. She lives in the village close to Tartu and starts walking several kilometers toward town hospital.  The baby does not wait and she has to stop in the park, already near the city center. There are couple of German solders, one with medical education, who help Anna Marie to deliver the baby in the public park. Later, they help – already two of them - to the hospital.

Aleksander, serving in the Soviet red Army, hears only a year later how German soldier helped his baby boy Arne to life.

Storyteller: Arne; Wrote down this story: Margit Säre