Tag #115403 - Interview #83163 (Anatoli Kraemer )

We had a pretty comfortable living before 1940. My cousin Alexander, with whom we were friends, graduated from lyceum and entered the Law Department of Tartu University. I was still studying at the lyceum. In 1939 Hitler attacked Poland [8]. Polish fugitives appeared in Estonia. We were not thinking of the threat, as the war seemed to be far away from Estonia, and reckoned that the Germans would not come to us. In actuality, the war was over soon. The Soviet Union commissioned troops in Poland and the German army was defeated, and Germany signed a non-aggression treaty with the Soviet Union, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact [9].

Shortly after that Soviet military bases were constructed in Estonia and it did not cause any concern. At that time people did not worry as they hoped that Estonia would be safe thanks to Soviet military bases. Moreover, the first fascist organizations appeared in Estonia. Some people, who had fought for the independence of Estonia [10] in 1918, became its members. Other fighters for independence, including the president, Konstantin Päts, were against fascism. [Päts, Konstantin (1874-1956): The most influential politician of interwar Estonia, Päts headed the Estonian Provisional Government (1918–1919), although being imprisoned during the German Occupation. In the Provisional Government, he also served as Minister of Internal Affairs (1918) and Minister of War (1918–1919), that left him organizing Estonian troops for the War of Independence. In 1938 he became the first President of Estonia. During his presidency, the Soviet Union occupied Estonia in 1940. As President, he was forced to sign decrees for over a month, until he was finally arrested and deported to Russia, where he died in 1956.