In Search of Our Fathers:
Suurpõgenemine/
Great Baltic Escape 1944,
a collaborative venture between
Mae Productions Inc. & VEMU/
Estonian Museum Canada, a
designated Charitable Organization.
Registered Charity number 80412 0020 RR0001
We have been recording the oral histories of Estonian elders for over 10 years, as a way to capture our history before it is forgotten or lost forever. Our focus was to interview people who were born in free Estonia, who fled the Soviet incursion in 1944 during the Great Baltic Escape 1944, as children with their parents, or as young adults.
Mae Productions earlier collaboration with the Estonian Studies Centre, enabled us to create the film Patterns of Freedom/Vabaduse mustrid on the women of the Estonian Diaspora.
Both the women’s films and the men’s stories are based on our interviews with people born in free Estonia, and forced to flee their homeland, most in the fall of 1944, during the Great Baltic Escape 1944, as the Soviet armies were overrunning Estonia, for the second time. The Baltic /Eastern European countries suffered under three occupations in WWII - first Soviet, then German, and then again Soviet armies, an occupation that did not end with the end of the war.
Now in collaboration with VEMU/Estonian Museum Canada we are working on the men’s stories In Search of Our Fathers/Meie isade otsingul, and the archival material; stories that desperately need to be preserved before they are lost forever.
We have 5 compelling films, 3 current projects and 2 future ones. Details can be found on the Projects page. Now we need the resources to carry it out.Your donation will enable us to weave these stories together into a timeless narrative providing an understanding of the Estonian/Baltic Diaspora, in the light of the current Russian war on Ukraine and this complex history to a wider audience.
But we can’t do it alone! Your Tax Deductible (Canada) donation will keep this project alive and moving forward. Donations of $20+ will be recognized in the credits.
