We Lived for Estonia Estonian: Elasime Eestile | |
---|---|
Directed by | Andres Sööt |
Written by | Andres Sööt |
Starring | Alfred Käärmann |
Music by | Sven Grünberg |
Distributed by | MONOfilm (:et) |
Release date |
|
Running time | 41 minutes |
Country | Estonia |
Language | Estonian |
We Lived for Estonia [1] (Estonian : Elasime Eestile) is a documentary film about the Forest brothers during World War II.
During June 1941, Nazi forces occupied Estonia. By 1944, when the Soviet-Nazi frontline was drawing towards the Estonian border from the East, Alfred Käärmann was conscripted into the German military. By September 1944 the Red Army had again occupied Estonia. Alfred was forced to make a decision: whether to stay in Estonia or retreat with the Germans. He chose the former, However he risked arrest and deportation by the Soviets. In order to survive, he, like many other Estonian men, took refuge in the forests. They were known as the Forest brothers. Alfred Käärmann discusses his experience with the Forest brothers.
The Reichskommissariat Ostland was established by Nazi Germany in 1941 during World War II. It became the civilian occupation regime in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and the western part of Byelorussian SSR. German planning documents initially referred to an equivalent Reichskommissariat Baltenland. The political organization for this territory – after an initial period of military administration before its establishment – involved a German civilian administration, nominally under the authority of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories led by Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, but actually controlled by the Nazi official Hinrich Lohse, its appointed Reichskommissar.
Alfons Vilhelm Robert Rebane was an Estonian military commander. He was the most highly decorated Estonian military officer during World War II, serving in various Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS units of Nazi Germany.
The occupation of the Baltic states was a period of annexation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania begun by the Soviet Union in 1940, continued for three years by Nazi Germany after it invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, and finally resumed by the Soviet Union until its dissolution in 1991.
Klooga concentration camp was a Nazi forced labor subcamp of the Vaivara concentration camp complex established in September 1943 in Harju County, during World War II, in German-occupied Estonia near the village of Klooga. The Vaivara camp complex was commanded by German officers Hans Aumeier, Otto Brennais and Franz von Bodmann and consisted of 20 field camps, some of which existed only for short periods.
The Reichskommissariat Ukraine was established by Nazi Germany in 1941 during World War II. It was the civilian occupation regime of much of Nazi German-occupied Ukraine. It was governed by the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories headed by Alfred Rosenberg. Between September 1941 and August 1944, the Reichskommissariat was administered by Erich Koch as the Reichskommissar. The administration's tasks included the pacification of the region and the exploitation, for German benefit, of its resources and people. Adolf Hitler issued a Führer decree defining the administration of the newly-occupied Eastern territories on 17 July 1941.
The Estonian resistance movement was an underground movement to resist the occupation of Estonia by Nazi Germany, 1941–1944 during World War II. Due to the unusually benign measures implemented in Estonia by the German occupation authorities, especially in contrast to the preceding harsh Soviet occupation of Estonia (1940–1941), the movement was slower to develop effective tactics on a wide scale than in other occupied countries.
In the course of Operation Barbarossa, Nazi Germany invaded Estonia in July–December 1941, and occupied the country until 1944. Estonia had gained independence in 1918 from the then-warring German and Russian Empires. However, in the wake of the August 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact, the Soviet Union had invaded and occupied Estonia in June 1940, and the country was formally annexed into the USSR in August 1940.
After the occupation of Latvia by the USSR in June 1940, much of the previous Latvian army was disbanded and many of its soldiers and officers were arrested and imprisoned or executed. The following year Nazi Germany occupied Latvia during the offensive of Army Group North. The German Einsatzgruppen were aided by a group known as Arajs Kommando in the killing of Latvian Jews as part of the Holocaust. Latvian soldiers fought on both sides of the conflict against their will, and in 1943 180,000 Latvian men were drafted into the Latvian Legion of the Waffen-SS and other German auxiliary forces.
Otto Tief was an Estonian politician, military commander, and a lawyer.
The Estonian government-in-exile was the formally declared governmental authority of the Republic of Estonia in exile, existing from 1944 until the reestablishment of Estonian sovereignty over Estonian territory in 1991. It traced its legitimacy through constitutional succession to the last Estonian government in power prior to the June 1940 Soviet invasion and occupation of the country. During its existence, it was the internationally recognized government of Estonia.
Estonia declared neutrality at the outbreak of World War II (1939–1945), but the country was repeatedly contested, invaded and occupied, first by the Soviet Union in 1940, then by Nazi Germany in 1941, and ultimately reinvaded and reoccupied in 1944 by the Soviet Union.
Alfred Käärmann was an Estonian resistance fighter, also known as Forest brother, as the Estonians call their guerrillas, and author. In 2007 he was decorated with a military honour in recognition of his service. According to The New York Times, Alfred Käärmann's life is "a monument to man's astounding ability to endure the unbearable".
The National Committee of the Republic of Estonia was a deliberative and legislative body, formed by Estonian politicians and members of the last government of Republic of Estonia before the Soviet occupation, to control the Anti-Soviet resistance movement in Nazi-occupied Estonia in March 1944. By April 1944 a large number of the committee members were arrested by the German security agencies. On September 20, 1944, the committee proclaimed the Republic of Estonia restored, but two days later, the Soviet Army took control of Tallinn.
Latvian national partisans were Latvian pro-independence partisans who waged guerrilla warfare against Soviet rule during and after the Second World War.
Lithuanian partisans were partisans who waged guerrilla warfare in Lithuania against the Soviet Union in 1944–1953. Similar anti-Soviet resistance groups, also known as Forest Brothers and cursed soldiers, fought against Soviet rule in Estonia, Latvia and Poland. An estimated total of 30,000 Lithuanian partisans and their supporters were killed. The Lithuanian partisan war lasted almost for a decade, thus becoming one of the longest partisan wars in Europe.
Estonian partisans, also called the Forest Brothers were partisans who engaged in guerrilla warfare against Soviet forces in Estonia from 1940 to 1941 and 1944 to 1978.
The Soviet Union (USSR) occupied most of the territory of the Baltic states in its 1944 Baltic Offensive during World War II. The Red Army regained control over the three Baltic capitals and encircled retreating Wehrmacht and Latvian forces in the Courland Pocket where they held out until the final German surrender at the end of the war.
The guerrilla war in the Baltic states was an insurgency waged by Baltic partisans against the Soviet Union from 1944 to 1956. Known alternatively as the "Forest Brothers", the "Brothers of the Wood" and the "Forest Friars", these partisans fought against invading Soviet forces during their occupation of the Baltic states during and after World War II. Similar insurgent groups resisted Soviet occupations in Bulgaria, Poland, Romania and Ukraine.
Artur Terras was an Estonian lawyer and politician who was the mayor of Tallinn from 24 August 1941 to September 1944. His older brother was former Estonian State Secretary Karl Terras.
Ants Kaljurand popularly known as Terrifying Ants,, was an Estonian Nazi collaborator, anti-communist, and forest brother during and after World War II.