Tallinn Trip – Estonian History Museum (Enno Piir’s Soil from the Fatherland)

Enno Piir (1910-2006) went into hiding during the occupation regime as one of the Forest Brother resistance movement. This group really were heroes, I can only aspire to have been as brave as them. They hid in the forests and persisted in guerilla warfare against the Soviets between 1940 and 1941, then again from 1944 to 1978. Fearing persecution (and rightly fearing this, the Soviets were big on executions), he took a false name after the Second World War as the Soviets went on the hunt for the members of the resistance movement, arresting hundreds of them. He was found in 1952 in Viljandimaa and arrested, being sentenced to 25 years imprisonment and sent to a prison camp in Komi land where he would have been subjected to hard labour. In this bag is a symbolic pocketful of soil from Estonia and he wanted some put in his grave, as he was sure he would die and never make it back to his homeland. However, he survived the prison camp and return to Estonia in 1957, keeping this bag until he died in 2006. A brave patriot.