Oskar, Elli and Ingel Süld with Kristiine Mihkels from Saaremaa Island, Estonia
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This lovely group photo found its way into the PWF archive from an antique shop on the Estonian island of Saaremaa. It shows the following persons:
Süld Oskar and Süld Elli
Süld Ingel
Kristiina Mihkels
Olga Põldmaa and Roobert Säkk
In faded handwriting on the front, it seems to read: July 1935.
Estonians are avid genealogists, and so I could easily find some of these individuals in the family trees built on Geni.com. The public Geni pages for Oskar and Elli Süld even share their wedding photo! How beautiful — and how moving it is to recognize the same faces in this group portrait.
Oskar Süld and Emilie “Elli” Rüütel married on March 9, 1935, in Valjala on Saaremaa. Oskar was 26, Elli 24.
Oskar was the second oldest child of Juhan Süld and Ingel (née Pärtel). As the eldest son, he probably inherited the family farm in Uue-Löve, Valjala.
Elli was born Emilie but known as Elli among her loved ones. According to the Geni family tree, she had at least ten siblings, being the oldest herself. Unfortunately, little is known about her parents, Toomas Rüütel and Miina (née Puppart).
By the outbreak of WWII in Estonia, Oskar and Elli were parents. And then, as so often happens in researching Estonian families of that generation, a cold shiver ran down my spine when I uncovered the next fact of their story: Elli passed away in 1945 in her mid-30s. How unbearably heartbreaking. Oskar survived all the brutal battles of the WWII, only to return home to a personal tragedy that left his children motherless. I don’t know the cause of Elli’s untimely death — whether illness, war-related hardship, or something else — but the pain must have been immeasurable.
An article published in May 1982, on the occasion of Oskar’s 75th birthday, recounted his military service and life as a respected blacksmith in postwar Estonia. Yet less than half a year after that article, Oskar himself passed away on October 17, 1982:
"War veteran, work veteran
In August 1941, Oskar Süld was mobilized into the war. It was not an easy departure — he left behind crying children, his wife, and his mother — but he had to go. At the mobilization point in Kuressaare, men from Sakla village stayed together. Many Saaremaa men, including Oskar, were skilled carpenters, so they were sent to work battalions, building military structures.
Oskar’s brigade was eventually assigned to the 925th Rifle Regiment, and he served as a mortar man near Velikije Luki. Because of his farming background, he was skilled with horses and was given responsibility for horse-drawn weapons transport. During the Velikije Luki battles, Oskar was wounded and sent to a reserve regiment to recover. He missed some of the liberation battles in mainland Estonia, but was later sent as reinforcement to Saaremaa. There he endured a long, exhausting march with his unit and returned to the front lines.
During one of the marches, the men were completely exhausted. By evening they reached the Suur Väin (the strait between Saaremaa and Muhu) and crossed to the other side of the island. Most of the men just looked for a place to collapse and rest. But Oskar Süld’s longing to see his family was stronger than fatigue. Instead of lying down, he asked his commander for permission to continue the journey on his own. He then ran off the road to visit his home, which was about 50 kilometers away. He made a quick visit to his loved ones, and by the following evening, when the rest of the men arrived at Sakla, Oskar was back with them, ready to continue marching with his unit.
Later he was reassigned as a signalman in the regiment, responsible for repairing communication lines under heavy fire. This was extremely dangerous work: several times he narrowly escaped death, and once a mortar explosion near his dugout severely wounded him. Despite injuries, Oskar fought again in the Courland battles (Latvia), serving with an anti-tank rifle. In one fierce attack, a mortar shell exploded nearby, and shrapnel badly wounded both his legs. This became his last battle.
Victory came soon after, and Oskar spent the final days of the war in a hospital before returning to Estonia with the army.
After demobilization, Oskar returned to Sakla. A blacksmith by training, he worked for years as a kolkhoz (collective farm) blacksmith, becoming a respected craftsman and worker."
Ingel Süld
Now a few words about Oskar’s mother and Elli’s mother-in-law, Ingel Süld, the lady wrapped in a scarf sitting in front of Oskar and Elli. The resemblance of Oskar to her is uncanny, don’t you think?
Ingel was born as Ingel Pärtel in Võhksa manor on December 14, 1877, to parents Kusti Pärtel and Mari née Leivamees. She married Oskar’s father, Juhan Süld, in June 1906 in Valjala.
According to the Geni family tree, Ingel Süld died in 1946, and her husband Juhan in 1948.
The 1940s were certainly hard for Oskar, who first lost his friends in WWII battles, then his young wife, and then his parents just a few years apart.
Kristiine Mihkels
How the other three persons in the photo related to Oskar, Elli, and Ingel – I don’t know for sure. Perhaps Kristiine (Kristiina) Mihkels, the other lady sitting in the first row wearing a beret, was the godmother of one of the newlyweds, or a neighbour, or a family friend?
I found a Geni family tree for Kristiine Mihkels, who was born in October 1886 and in 1935, when this photo was taken, lived in the same region in Valjala as the Süld family. She would have been about 50 at the time.
The Muhu Museum has a photo of her with her children from earlier years – this is the same woman in my found photo:
The Mihkels family had standing in Valjala. Kristiine’s husband, Aleksander Mihkels, owned a transportation company, the first of its kind on Saaremaa island.
It is not exaggerated to say that every family in Estonia suffered in one way or another from the mass deportations under the Soviet regime, which destroyed families, tortured, starved, and executed those who did not fit the ideals of the Soviet Union. So did the Mihkels family, in the most tragic way. Successful businessmen and often also their families were one of the groups targeted in the June 1941 mass deportations to Siberia.
Aleksander Mihkels and his wife Kristiine were both arrested in the night of June 14, 1941, and deported into exile.
Aleksander died in exile in 1944 of “dystrophy,” which essentially means he died of hunger and exhaustion under inhuman conditions. According to the Database of Victims of Communism, Kristiina Mihkels, daughter of Georg, born in 1886, resident of Saaremaa, Valjala parish, was deported on June 14, 1941, to Nagorsk district, Kirov oblast, in Soviet Russia. In November 1946 she escaped back to Estonia. She was arrested again, and on July 25, 1947, sentenced by special order. After release she was sent back into exile and was finally released in April 1955. Kristiine died in June 1963 and was buried at the Reomäe Cemetery on Saaremaa Island.
In 1942, when the Soviet occupation in Estonia was briefly interrupted by the Nazi occupation, letters from deportees began to reach their families. Some women and their children deported from Saaremaa in June, 1941, were able to send a letter through the International Red Cross, informing their friends and families about their whereabouts. That letter was published in the local newspaper. Of course, the letters were strictly censored, which is why the letter Kristiine and others sent sounds more neutral than real, almost as if the women were content doing hard manual labour in the forests of Russia, 2000 km away from home:
An excerpt from the memoirs of Juta Saks, who was deported together with Kristiine Mihkels and who was a 10-year-old girl at the time, was published in a local newspaper in 1990, after it had become safe to talk publicly about the horrors of the Soviet regime without life-threatening consequences (*yes, according to Soviet and even modern Russian history books, the Soviet deportations never happened...).
I was particularly touched by how she described the reunion of Kristiine and her husband in exile:
“One day, something unbelievable happened. Into the barrack came an old man. How he was recognized, I don’t recall, but it turned out that he was the lawful husband of one of the old women there – Aleksander Mihkels. He had been released from prison and sent to join his wife. He stood at the barrack door, and it was hard to tell whether he was a man or some kind of ghost. His beard was frosted, he wore a cap with ragged scarves tied around it, his face was thin and pitiful, with an expression one could never forget. He came to live in our room. The women gave him the best place – behind the stove wall. Whether he was considered too weak to be a man or whether the women simply did not see him as one, I don’t know, but the children soon became his companions. He always carried a beloved scarf, and the children sat on his lap. We ourselves remembered him from earlier times, when he had been a bus driver on the Kuressaare–Kuivastu line. Now, however, he told us how he survived by digging through garbage pits, mostly those near the cafeterias, and putting into his mouth anything and everything he could find. He was not sent to work; he received 300 grams of bread per day. Soon they took him to the cemetery by the lake. I remember that when his body turned cold, lice quickly left his thin hair.”
May their souls rest in peace...
Robert Säkk and Olga Põldmaa
How the other two persons – Roobert (Robert) Säkk and Olga Põldmaa – fit into this photo, I don’t know. As far as I could find out, they were not related to either the newlyweds or to Kristiine Mihkels. Perhaps they were good friends of the young couple and acted as witnesses at their wedding?
One Robert Säkk was born on May 29, 1916 in Kalli village, not far from where the Süld family lived. But I don’t know if this was the Robert in our photo. I
One Marie Säkk, born in 1904, was among the deportees of June 14, 1941, and she lived together with Kristiine Mihkels in the work camp in Kirov oblast, Russia. I haven’t been able to find anything more on this Marie Säkk, but I wonder if she was somehow related to Robert Säkk from our photo – perhaps a sister?
I’ve not been able to find Olga Põldmaa of our photo in any records, or I’m not sure I’ve found the correct one. Maybe she knew Elli from school or was a childhood friend; perhaps she was her maid of honour.
When I look at this group portrait, taken in July 1935, I see hope: a wedding, a family gathered, a moment of light. None of them could have imagined the storms that lay ahead, or how violently history would intrude on their lives.
The accounts of their suffering are almost too painful to read. Yet they stand as a testimony to the quiet endurance of thousands of Estonian families torn apart by war, deportation, and repression.
Even through all the hardship, their faces remain — captured in this single photograph. A reminder that they laughed, loved, and cherished one another before the world changed. A reminder, too, that behind every historical statistic are real people, with families and dreams, whose stories deserve to be remembered.
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