The bombing of Rezekne in 1944
The bombing of Rēzekne took place at Easter 1944, and as a result a large part of the city's buildings were destroyed and dozens of civilians were killed, while several thousand more were left homeless. People who have experienced these events on their own skin and can tell us about them were children at the time. One of them is also the author of this story.
It was around Easter. We lived in Rēzekne, near the lake. Russian planes, bombers flew quite high and threw flyers that the city will be bombed and the population evacuated. In turn, the German fighters could not fly higher and shoot those bombers. There was no bombing the first night, and then we drove to the countryside on the Maltese side to get away. However, there was no bombing and we returned. The next day the same thing happened again with the flyers, but we didn't believe it anymore, we didn't leave and stayed. The next day the flyers are thrown again, the destroyers shoot there and again we didn't seem to believe. My mother had gone somewhere, only my father and we had children. My father sat and listened to the radio all the time. The first bombs exploded in the night away from us, then exploded in the lake where people were killed, and then one bomb exploded at one end of our house, and half of it was destroyed. The father of course ran to watch out with the children, but they all slept, I was the eldest, but there were 2 more sisters and a brother who was the youngest, only born in 1941, a little at all. We all slipped out the window because the door was broken and we didn't get out, then our neighbors helped our neighbors to lift us all out the windows, and there was a basement in the yard where we took refuge. The lights of that rocket were already a lot thrown out and we could see the devastation from our yard, the whole city was bombed very hard. After that, we did not return to our house and did not live. Sometime later we drove to watch and everything there was completely transformed. At first, after the bombing, we moved very close to distant relatives who had vacated half of their homes because their daughter had fled to America as a refugee. After that, the father and the other men were already preparing a bunker in the forest, if anything came again, so that they could hide there. Later, when the Germans retreated, there was a case when one of us came to us, he had a grenade in his hand and asked to give him food, the housewife who housed us gave us chickens, eggs and other goodies. Then came the Russians, who also settled in our yard, and since there were a lot of women there, they respected us all with chocolate. But they also did not last long.
Related topics
Related objects
Skulte airplane IL-28
Located in Mārupe region, Skulte village, near Riga International Airport.
Skulte was one of the typical villages that was created for Soviet military personnel. There was an aviation unit that bombed the cities of Berlin and other places in 1941, as well as took part in the occupation of the Baltic States. In 1978, an environmental facility, the IL-28, was installed there to highlight the merits of Soviet Army pilots in World War II.
After the war, the Soviet Union continued its active armaments policy. IL-28 was the first, most produced Soviet jet bomber. The first RDS-4 atomic bomb ("Tatiana") was dropped from a plane of the same model in 1953 to test the army's ability to attack after a nuclear explosion. The aircraft had various modifications. In tests, it reached a speed of 906 km / h, carrying several tons of heavy cargo and flying 2,445 km. It was run by a crew of 3 people.
The plane is not only a witness to the military heritage, but also a symbol of ideology. In 2010, marking the victory of the Soviet army over Germany, the plane was rebuilt. There have also been several unsuccessful attempts to dismantle it as an object glorifying the occupation regime in Latvia.
Today you can see a plane, as well as get an idea of a village built for Soviet military personnel.
Museum of the Occupation of Latvia
The museum exhibits the history of Latvia from 1940 to 1991, under the occupation of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. ‘House of the Future’ is a reconstruction and expansion project of the Occupation Museum designed by the well-known American Latvian architect Gunārs Birkerts as well as the new exhibit of the museum. The exhibit ‘History of Cheka in Latvia’ was created by the Occupation Museum and it is located in the ‘Corner House’, which is the former USSR State Security Committee (KGB) building. Latvian Occupation Museum was founded in 1993. It tells the long-hidden story of the fate of the Latvian state, nation and land under the occupation of two foreign totalitarian powers from 1940 to 1991. At the end of 2020 the museum had more than 70,000 different historical items (documents, photographs, written, oral and material evidence, objects and memorabilia). Museum specialists have recorded more than 2,400 video testimonials, making it one of the largest collections on occupation in Europe. The events that unfolded in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia clearly show us what the nations had to endure under the two totalitarian regimes.
