Daniella's Misadventures

Family Stories

For some reason, I don't know that much about my family. My parents don't often tell stories about our relatives and those that they have told have somehow melded in with dreams and other stuff that never happened to the point that I don't really know what's true and what isn't. Sometimes I will start telling John a family story, only to be interrupted by mom or dad to let me know that no such thing ever happened.

I'm actually very sorry that I know so little about my grandmother and grandfather's time and those that came before them because the things that I DO know are so fascinating. My Babushka Tatiana, my father's mother, told stories quite a bit before she passed away in January 2002, but she spoke only Russian, and I had a hard time understanding her. My Babushka Molly and my Dedushka Faivish, my mother's parents, don't often speak of their experiences.

This Thanksgiving, however, I heard a fascinating and very sad story about Babushka Molly's cousin and the Soviets. I heard both from my father, and then, a day later, from Babushka herself.

Babushka's cousin Leo was an affluent and well educated merchant during the period that Latvia was free (for those who don't know, my mother's side of the family is from Riga, Latvia - one of the small Baltic countries which was occupied by the Soviets in 1939 and again after the war until 1990. I was born there and we came to this country when I was five years old.) He had exclusive Latvian distribution of fine men's suit fabric from England. He was very succesful and owned six large apartment buildings. His whole family was educated and, according to Babushka, very stylish and genteel.

When it began to look inevitable that the Soviets were going to invade Latvia in 1939, Leo knew that they would confiscate everything. He gathered what he could of his liquid assets, money, gold, jewelry, etc, and hid it in one of the walls of one of the apartment buildings that he owned. Sure enough, soon after the Soviets arrived, Leo was arrested as a Capitalist. He and his entire family were convicted and sent to Siberia, where they lived in the work camps (the Gulag) for thirty years. All his holdings were confisctaed and became property of the Soviet State of Latvia. The apartment buildings were turned into a college.

When he returned in 1970, he told my grandfather about the money. The room where it was hidden (bricked up inside a wall) was now an administrative office of the college. My grandfather told my father, who, at the time, was dating my mother. The three of them made daring plans to break in to get to Leo's fortune. This was HIS money. It was legitimately earned -- he was a business man. In the end, Leo was too frightened of being sent back to the Gulag. He called the authorities and made a full confession, telling them where the money was hidden.

For this the bastards gave him a "finder's fee" of 7% -- of his own money!

He gave my parents a huge amount (to them) of money as wedding gift -- the 7% was still a great fortune by Soviet standards. He died not long after my parent's wedding.

What a sad story!