Tell me about your grandparents

[tavernier]

24. My grandparents, as their ancestors before them, came from Latvia

as far back as anyone remembers. My grandfather was a tanner and had a business in the town square in Tukums, Latvia. He spent several years in Siberia as a younger man, as the Russians always got their jollies ripping apart families to send any Latvian male within fighting age to Siberia where many would die. During WWII, my grandparents were forced to flee from their home with my mother, age 18. They ended up in a DP camp where I was born. (Mom had met my dad, also Latvian, by that time.)
My uncle, mom’s brother was a school principal, so the Russians sent him and all the educated Latvians to Siberia in cattle trains. My grandparents never saw him again. My mother did locate his whereabouts years later and they remained in touch.

I never met my father’s parents because they remained in Jelgava, Latvia with their young daughter. My father and his brother had been conscripted into the German army and ended up in America. My dad did see his mother once before she died because he was able to get special permission to return for a visit. My grandfather was an accountant and my grandmother was an actress.

Millions of tears and many broken hearts were caused by that war.