12 April 2009

Brigitte Truschinsky, part 2 FOUND

She has been found! I am currently corresponding with a relative of mine named Karina from Latvia. She is the daughter of my father's uncle. Her mother either chose to remain in Latvia after the Germans were pushed out by the Soviets or returned to Latvia from a displaced persons camp after the war. I do have a few relatives (who, again, where ethnic Germans) who chose to return to Latvia after World War II. One relative said "you can't ever escape the Russians". Well, I inquired about August Johann Theodor Truschinsky and what I knew about him (apparently married twice and had three children, though we only knew the name of one, "Brigitte"). I enclosed an old photo we had in my letter to her with these facts. She "looked up" this person and found her! I don't know how she went about looking up this person, but she told me that they had a great conversation and are now friends! She shared that Brigitte had a sister named Erica who died in 1993 and also a bit about August -a man I had been trying to find out more information about for what seems to be quite some time! She said that August was a member of the Latvian Legion -a unit made up of ethnic Latvians who faught for the German army in World War II. Others might more accurately describe them as fighting against the Russians, not for the Nazis. He survived, but was captured by the Soviets and sent to Moscow for some period of time. All of the allies (except the Soviets, of course), after investigating the role of the Latvian Legion in World War II concluded that they were, indeed, clearly electing to fight the Soviets, instead of really fighting for the Nazis. The Finns did the same thing, but in the role of allies not actually a part of the German military machine. Indeed, documentation from the German military demonstrates increasing concern about the loyalty of the Latvians. I am looking forward to learning more about him and his daugthers. A major bummer of this information is that it doesn't seem to show that he had any male children, so that I still have yet to find a link between the various "Trusinskis" and "Trusinska"s (Latvian spelling of Truschinsky) in Latvia with our Trusinsky/Truschinsky's in the USA.