Building on the digital exhibition Free Winds, representatives from the Occupation and Freedom Museum Vabamu in Tallinn, Estonia, will give a lecture on the Estonian refugees who arrived in Sweden in 1944 but, during the latter half of the 1940s, chose to flee onward due to fear of the Soviet Union. In old and worn boats, they sailed across the Atlantic in search of freedom.
In the autumn of 1944, as the Red Army re-entered the Baltic region, tens of thousands of people fled across the Baltic Sea to Sweden. Following Sweden’s recognition of the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states, and under pressure from the Soviet Union to repatriate Baltic refugees, many Estonians decided to take their fate into their own hands. Groups of Estonians purchased and repaired old boats and, in these vessels, secretly departed from Sweden, sailing as far away from the Soviet Union as possible—to countries such as Canada, the United States, Argentina, Brazil, and South Africa.
The lecture offers an in-depth overview of the exhibition and the material on which it is based, highlighting some of the boats and personal stories of those who dared to venture out onto the open sea. On the day of the event, a poster version of the exhibition in Estonian and English will also be available to visit at the Swedish National Maritime and Transport Museums.
Participants
Lisa Trei, curator of the exhibition, consultant at the Occupation and Freedom Museum Vabamu, and master’s student in Estonian Studies at Tallinn University.
Ede Schank Tamkivi, Product Manager for NoVa at the Occupation and Freedom Museum Vabamu, responsible, among other things, for the Estonian translation of the exhibition.
Maja Soomägi, Head of Programmes at the Occupation and Freedom Museum Vabamu, translator of the digital exhibition into Swedish.