On Friday, September 20, at 4 p.m., the Haapsalu town hall will open the exhibition “The year of fate 1944 in Läänemaa”, commemorating the Great Escape. While there are other open-air exhibitions with text stands all over Estonia, the Haapsalu town hall exhibition is one of the few exhibitions where the material heritage of the escape plays an important part.
80 years ago, tens of thousands of Estonians fled their homeland. Many thought that the departure was temporary and that they would manage to return to Estonia when the Second World War ended. However, the exile lasted for decades, and many refugees never saw their homeland again.
Haapsalu and Läänemaa in general play an important role in the story of the great escape. In addition to local escapees, thousands of refugees who wanted to reach the West arrived here. Haapsalu was like a stopover where panicked people could stop for a while and think about how and where to move forward.
In the exhibition “Destiny Year 1944 in Läänemaa” dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the Great Escape, you can get an overview of the events of the Great Escape in Läänemaa during the Second World War based on both the latest research results and the memories of individuals.
The exhibition exhibits objects with stories, several of which have traveled through Lääne County with the refugees and returned to their homeland at the request of the refugees. These are the objects from which people’s destinies emerge. For example, the exhibition features a backpack made from the fabric of a straw mattress in a German refugee camp, which tells the story of a family that fled with a small child. Many stories and objects are related to Westerners.
In addition, the exhibition contains stories of people who fled from the approaching Eastern Front to Läänemaa, where they settled in empty farms and started a new life.
In terms of time, the exhibition covers the time from the establishment of Red Army bases in Estonia in 1939 to the stories of people who left in 1944 in refugee camps in Sweden and Germany.
In addition to the exhibition in the town hall, there is a mini-exhibition in the Railway and Communications Museum in Haapsalu “The fateful year 1944 in Läänemaa. Derailed boat”.
The exhibitions are part of the Estonian Memory Institute’s all-Estonian exhibition series “Year of Fate 1944”.
The curator of the exhibition opening in the Town Hall is Kadri Laur, the designers are Anneliis Aunapuu and Anni Vakkum.
The exhibition will remain open until August 24, 2025.
Source: online.le.ee
