Fifty-ninth installment from the diary of my great-grandfather’s sister Alise, written during the First World War. When the diary starts, she is living just a few miles from the front lines of the Eastern Front, and is then forced to flee with her husband and two young daughters to her family’s house near Limbaži as the war moves even closer. Her third child, a son, was born there in February 1916. The family has now relocated (again) to a home near Valmiera, and the Russian Revolution is in full swing. For more background, see here, and click on the tag “diary entries” to see all of the entries that I have posted.

If there is mention of a recognizable historical figure and event, I will provide a Wikipedia link so that you can read more about the events that Alise is describing.

February 7, 1918

Last night I went to town to see where they were being held. So many in such a small room. There is talk that they will be sent away. I hadn’t brought anything, but I borrowed bread and tobacco that the Latvian soldiers searched beforehand, as if we were big criminals. Early this morning I rushed there with a package for our loved one to have on the road, but I was too late. At 2am they had all been herded to the station, loaded into cattle cars and sent away to their horrible fate.