Target language: English
Forced to mobilize, in breach with international law, by the Soviet occupation authority, Edgar Kurn was one of more than 30 000 estonians who, during the war-summer of 1941, shared that fate. Instead of being enlisted and sent to the front line the estonians were despatched to
forestry-work in the hinterlands because they were not trusted by the Russians. For more than half a year Kurm, as well as his fellow victims, had to toil in inhumane conditions in the Kotlas region of Northern Russia. A third of the men starved to death, succumbed to infectious deseases or just perished out of exhaustion because, in essence, the place was no more than an extermination-camp. A survivor by luck, Kurn, along with thousands of his compatriots, was taken to TÅ¡ebarkul, where Estonian divisions were now being formed.