My grandmother never saw her father. Or maybe that she saw ever him? When asked about her husband Peter, my great-grandmother always answered shortly: "He was killed. Who? Reds, Whites… I don't know. Who separated them there?" Indeed, a Famine of 1919 and a one-month-old daughter was in care. Then was a typhoid hospital in Petrozavodsk, searching of her daughter (she found and nursed her). A suicide of her second husband, a militiaman ("Why did he shoot himself? It was fashionable. Many killed themselves at that time.") After that was a hard work in a timber industry enterprise (according employment record book – as lumberjack). Her third husband Kalle August Aaltonen, who come from Canada to build communism in the in the Karelian Labour Commune, has disappeared somewhere in the Urals during the winter of 1941/42.

My grandmother never saw her father. Or maybe she saw him? Maybe young Karelian guy Pekka had the opportunity to hold his little daughter in his arms at least once before he went to his last reconnaissance trip?

Pekka Davidov's great-grandson
December 2021