Translated material
Shadows of Hiiumaa Island
The 88-year-old hero will be tried
The Estonian authorities decided to put in the dock the first Estonian Hero of the Soviet Union and the chairman of the country's Anti-Fascist Committee, Arnold Meri. 80 elderly witnesses were called to the trial to confirm Mr. Meri's participation in the genocide against the Estonian people in 1949. Although more than half a century has passed since then, in Estonia this is a crime without a statute of limitations.A practically deaf and blind 88-year-old man with blood pressure exceeding 200 is accused of preparing the deportation of 251 residents of the island of Hiiumaa for lifelong settlement in Siberia. Of these, 43 people did not survive. In 1949, Arnold Meri was the first secretary of the Komsomol of Estonia and a member of the Central Committee of its Communist Party. Mr. Meri does not deny that during the period of deportation he was a representative of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Estonian SSR, but assures that he tried to ease the fate of those exiled.
In 1951, on charges of passivity during the deportation of Estonians to Siberia, Arnold Mary was expelled from the party and deprived of all awards. Only in 1956, after an appeal to the 20th Congress of the CPSU, was he rehabilitated and reinstated in the party. The awards were also returned to him. Mr. Meri's main award has nothing to do with the events in post-war Estonia - the title of Hero of the Soviet Union was awarded to him for the defense of the corps headquarters near the city of Porkhov, Pskov region in July 1941. Wounded four times, he did not leave the battlefield.
“It’s been known for 20 years what I did in Hiiumaa. The blame game has been going on for 12 years, it started in 1995. Since I don’t think I have more than two years left to live, they will probably be able to It’s clear that I took part in what happened in Hiiumaa, but not in the role that I’m accused of,” Arnold Meri said in an interview with the Eesti Päävaleht newspaper.
The political split also affected Mary's family. His cousin Lennart Meri, who died in 2006, was President of Estonia from 1992 to 2001. But due to political differences, the cousins did not communicate. Five former employees of the republic's Ministry of State Security have already been convicted in the case of the deportation of Estonians in March 1949 in independent Estonia.