Two Rivers Join

Seija was born to Finnish Karelian parents in Viipuri, the capital of an eastern province in Finland called Karelia.  Finland’s history during the first half of the 20th century was a bloody one.  Snuggly fit along the Soviet Union’s long western border, Finland was pulled into several wars against the Soviet Union, first a war of independence from Russian rule in 1918, and then two back-to-back wars during WWII.  If not enough, the Finns fought still a third war against Germany toward the end of the world war.

Finland survived all of these, independence intact, but only after deep struggle and suffering.  This was the world Seija was born into.  Her family lost their home to the Soviets twice, her father was at war five years, and spent part of it in a Russian prison camp.  The Karelia that was their home was absorbed forever into Russia.  When her family escaped before the Red Army, they were homeless.  As hard as it was, she was gifted with resilient hardworking parents who gave her as happy a childhood as anyone could have hoped.  Their stories, grim as they often were, had happy ending.

Finland’s first war with Soviets, the “Winter War,” began in November 1939 when hordes of Red Army troops stormed across the border.  On that first day, Manne was already stationed on the front, but Seija’s mother, Lempi, were at home visiting with a relative.  They heard the planes coming and just as the bombers released their lethal payloads, the two women jumped into a potato cellar in their yard.  One of the bombs hit the ground just outside the home.  They survived, but the explosion blew off a good share of a side of the house.

The Winter War lasted about 100 days at the cost of hundreds of thousands of Red Army casualties.  Perhaps because of the heavy losses the Finnis inflicted on the Soviets, Finland succeeded in remaining independent.  But it lost much of Karelia, and Seija parents and grandparents were dispossessed of their home.  They evacuated under desperate circumstances to western and central Finland.

Hostilities began again after only a year in a new Finnish-Soviet war, called the “War of Continuation.”  When Viipuri was re-taken, the family returned to their old home where Seija was born.  They lived there two and a half years when the shifting winds of war forced them once again to abandon their home as they once again fled to central Finland.  This time, the home was gone with no hope of returning ever.

With Seija’s father lost on the front, presumed dead, her grandfather Aleksander became the first father she knew.  With her toddler in her arms, Seija’s mother Lempi and grandparents sought a place to live with relatives in a town called Lahti.  They shared a one-room plus kitchen apartment, seven in all.  When months later her POW father finally returned from the camps in Russia, they squeezed him in as well.

Lempi with Seija in arms, Grandmother Selma, and Grandfather Aleksander were Seija’s family as they left behind their dear Karelia

Just over 50 years from the day Seija and her family left their Viipuri home behind, we returned again, actually twice.  I was then serving in Finland as Charge’ d’Affaire at the American Embassy in Helsinki, and we took the opportunity to drive into Russia to see what had happened to the old home.  With the help of a local interpreter, we found it.

The years had taken their toll, but it was the same home with its lush gardens.  Quite surprisingly, the Russian family now living there welcomed us with open arms after we explained who we were.  They, too, had been victims of the war.  One day they were told to load onto a train from their home in the Ukraine.  When they got off, thousands of miles away, they were assigned to live in this house, the old Grandmother told us.  They had been there since the summer Seija’s family left.

Her son was born in the home, and Seija joked with him that since they were both born to this house, they should consider themselves step sister and brother.  When we left, they loaded us with berries from their garden and the surrounding forest to take with us.

During our two visits, we were able to have three of our adult children accompany us.  As always, family history is about the younger generation as much as those past.

During the bloody winter of 1917-1918, a bitter civil war ravaged Finland.  The leftist Red Guard, following Lenin’s Bolsheviks just across the border, wanted to establish a socialist-communist state.  The White Guard resisted and sought to anchor the newly independent country in Western values and democracy.  The Whites prevailed, but not before the war caught Seija’s grandparents, Manu and Ida, into its fury.  Red Guards abducted Manu and forced him to join them.  At war’s end, he was imprisoned and nearly perished from starvation and disease before being acquitted.  Meanwhile, Ida’s brother, a wounded Red Guard officer, sought refuge in her home.   He was miraculously saved by a White Guard soldier he had befriended.

About 2-3 years after Manu’s return from his abduction, civil war, and imprisonment: Manu Heimala and Ida Rikkilä Heimala (hand on shoulder), their son Manne (standing), Annikki (on Manu’s knee), and Anni Rikkilä Saalasti, Ida’s sister.