Martta Lindström – Traditional Interview

The complicated evacuation journey made the childhood of Martta Lindström from Heinola ”tattered”.

from Heinola Martta Lindström (née Kemppinen), 94, had the personal experience of being evacuated from Karelia to Ostrobothnia and on to Heinola.

He was born in 1930 in the village of Pärnä in Käkisalmi, and by the age of nine had reached the third grade of primary school when the global situation darkened.

– We noticed that there was movement at the local barracks. Similarly, defensive positions began to be built on the shores of Lake Ladoga and military equipment was brought in. My childhood was characterised by numerous army military exercises in the Kexholm area, he describes.

– At the time I couldn't guess that my schooling and entire childhood would be disrupted. The expectation was that if war broke out and we were evacuated, we would return to Käkisalmi and live normally there, he says.

In December 1939, the school day in Kexholm began as usual, until the teacher announced that everyone had to take their belongings from their desks and go home. Further instructions would be given shortly.

– On the way home I noticed that people and moving vans were starting to gather at your place. Soldiers and military vehicles were also on the move, he remembers.

The atmosphere at home was one of a mixture of fear.

– The sounds of war, the rumble of bombings could not yet be heard, but air raid sirens began to sound every now and then. A few times we rushed to hide in our concrete potato cellar.

On 5 December 1939, a man appeared at our door to announce that children and the elderly had to go to the railway station by 17:00 to wait for evacuation.

– I remember that day as if it were yesterday. My mother, to Aino Kemppinen It had been laundry day. Our clothes and sheets were hanging, sparkling clean but frozen, on the washing lines in the yard. It fell to me to gather the clothes from the line and iron them dry in a hurry so that we would have clean things to wear for the journey.

Only personal items that each person could carry themselves were allowed to be brought along.

– We were advised to take two days' worth of rations with us, so we hurried to make sandwiches, she remembers.

The rest of the day was spent on preparations and a 2.5-kilometre horse-drawn carriage ride to the station.

– In the end, we had to wait at the station until 22:00 before we could get on the train, Lindström recalls.

Lindström's last memory of the station as the train left was the teacher Arvo Airanne a large pile of school library books in her arms, which she handed out to the children for travel reading.

– There were so many people on the train that some of us were sitting on suitcases. Along with many other children, I was lifted up onto the luggage rack. It was on that train that I also learned my first sentence in Swedish: ”Spotta ej på golvet”.

The evacuation journey ended at Lapua station, from where the family got a lorry to the village of Höbaka in Ylistaro.

– We got accommodation at a small village school, where the Lotta women offered a meal, soup and dry crispbread. We slept the first nights on the floor on straw, Lindström remembers.

The spring of 1940 passed in Ylistaro, until the evacuees heard on the teacher's portable radio that peace had been made in Moscow.

– We were left waiting to see how my father To Johannes Kemppinen and other close relatives visit Käkisalmi.

Eventually, father and my 16-year-old sister Lyylikki as well came along behind to Ylistaro.

– Father had had to stay behind in Käkisalmi as a so-called civil defence soldier and sister had stayed to look after the cattle.

A herd of 20 cattle had also set out on the journey. Six cows made it all the way to Ylistaro. Some froze to death along the way, while others died in accidents.

– As my father was visually impaired, he didn't have to go to war, but instead got a job as a milk carrier in Ylistaro. That's how we made a living. We got an abandoned house to live in, Lindström recounts.

During the so-called interim peace, 1940–41, evacuees were not allowed to return to Karelia.

When Käkisalmi was recaptured during the Continuation War in 1941, the Kemppinen family was able to return to their home district in 1942.

Sister and father had already left earlier as a cleaning party. My brother Veikko followed after that. Me, mother and my sister Leena set off again with the cows in 20 degrees of frost, but the cattle made it to Kexholm in a cattle truck.

The Kemppis family could not get to their home immediately, because the area had not been checked after the enemy retreated. "We stayed the night nearby at Turkey House," Lindström says.

When the family finally got home, a distressing sight awaited them.

The devastation caused in our house was quite unspeakable. Fortunately, the residential building, barn and sauna were at least standing, though the livestock shelters had been destroyed. We began rebuilding. The biggest job was clearing the fields and making the lumber for the new cowhouse.

But in 1944, around the 20th of June, the distant rumble of war began to be heard again.

Martha had managed to start middle school at the Kexholm co-educational secondary school, but her schooling was interrupted once again when the departure for the final evacuation journey took place that same year.

– German soldiers came to the school to be billeted in the spring of 1944. The school moved to temporary rooms. We had already made plans to leave for Ostrobothnia if the situation in Käkisalmi tightened, Lindström says.

And that is indeed what happened. After evacuating to Alavus, the family's living situation was chaotic for a while, so Martta was forced to take a gap year from school in 1944–45.

The greatest distress was caused by the fact that, in the end, our own small detached house with its furnishings, as well as 6.5 hectares of fields and forest land, were left behind in Käkisalmi.

– When we lived in Käkisalmi, father had worked with his horses in the town and on nearby farms. Mother had looked after the home and occasionally done sewing work. We had been pioneers in so-called modern moonlight farming. You went to work by day and farmed by night. That idyllic, secure way of life of ours would now disappear for good, she recounts.

When the family finally found a permanent home in Heinola in 1945, Martta was able to concentrate on her schooling again.

– It was a somewhat crazy time. Because of the war, many of the syllabuses changed midway through our schooling, so we started some things all over again. Regarding geography, there were big changes because many national borders changed due to the war, she says.

Having finished lower secondary school, in 1948 Kemppinen set about looking for work and managed to secure a traineeship at the Heinola rural municipality municipal office located on Rajakatu.

– After my training ended, I applied and was accepted into the domestic science school in Orimattila in 1952.

After school, in 1953, Kemppinen returned as a temporary assistant to the municipal office.

– I worked as a clerk, dealing with tax matters and food ration cards, among other things, after the Ministry of Supply was wound up. At that time, the last food ration cards were being distributed in Heinola. Gradually, the fear of war subsided and a time of peace began, she says.

During the 1950s–1980s, Lindström’s career took him to the Social Insurance Institution as a pension adviser and benefits handler, roles in which he worked in Heinola and Loviisa.

– I divorced my husband Rainer Lindström together in 1965 and we lived in Pernaja. After retiring in 1989 and being widowed, I moved back to Heinola, the town of my youth, in 1992, Lindström says.

Following her move to Heinola, Lindström got involved in the activities of Heinolan Seudun Karjalaiset in 1992.

– Almost immediately, in 1993, I was elected as the association's secretary, a position I held for just under 20 years.

All that time I was responsible for, among other things, organising the Kexholm festivals. The association had the main responsibility for organising the practical activities together with the Kexholm Foundation.

One of the most important memories and a way of cherishing cultural heritage is the ancient Karelian costume commissioned in 1982 and the Kexholm costume commissioned in the early 1990s, which Lindström wore right up into the 2020s.

– While others put on party gear, I always put on the Karelian ancient costume. I also wore it at Pohjola-Norden meetings and at the presentation events of the National Museum and Kalevala Koru. The costume attracted interest and time and time again I got to tell the story of my history as a Karelian evacuee girl.

• Martta Lindström
  Res. Kemppinen, born in the village of Pärnä, Käkisalmi, on 26 July 1930.
  Spouse Rainer Lindström (1919-1991).
  Käkisalmi Co-educational Secondary School, 1942–44.
  Heinola Rural Municipality municipal office, trainee, 1949.
  Domestic science school, Orimattila 1952.
  Heinola rural municipality municipal office, temporary assistant, 1953.
  Post Office, Myllyoja Post Office, Head Postmistress, 1955.
  Social Insurance Institution, pension adviser Heinola, 1958-65.
  Social Insurance Institution, Loviisa, benefits handler, 1966–1988.
  Retired since 1989.
  Heinola Region Karelian Society, Secretary 1993-2010.