George Rebane

Tomorrow we leave on a trip that has been anticipated for about fifty years and has been in various stages of planning for about twenty-five years.  I am returning to Estonia, the little Baltic country where I was born, which we left as refugees in the spring of 1944 during the depth of World War II, and have not seen since then.  Jo Ann’s planning for the trip competes favorably with Eisenhower’s effort for D-Day.  We will fly to Germany and stay with dear friends we have also known for about fifty years – Jo Ann first stayed with their family as an exchange student, and then they became our family away from home when we were in the Army and I was stationed in Germany.  From there we fly to Tallinn, rent a car, and begin an odyssey of discovery guided by old family photos and documents that survived the war and have served as the link to my roots all these decades.  I think I still speak the language – we shall see.

Depending on the ease of connectivity, I will try to post some reflections and pictures from the old sod.