Rudolph was working at the family business. A lithograph / Typography company in Riga which opened in 1892. Their second child Irmgarde Ida Rudolpha Štekele was born in Riga on the 20th March 1921. Their third child Kurt, on the 17th of February 1923. Elise was a housewife; typical of a Latvian family at this time. The father went out and earned the money, whilst she took care of the children and nurtured their home.
Latvia was very prosperous during the years of independence (1920-1940) it had achieved a standard of living and an education level equivalent to that of Scandinavia. Irmgarde completed 6 years of Primary School and 4 years of Domestic Science at Trade School. However, by age 19, had fallen pregnant to the local locksmith; Vladislavs Lubovskis. Vladislavs was of Polish descent and worked at the Riga Wagon Factory.
On the 28th June 1940, only days after the Red Army invaded Latvia, Brigitta Lubovskis was born. Irmgarde registered herself and Vladislavs as Latvian citizens, telling the world they were not happy with the current political situation.
Irmgarde married Vladislav after the birth, although the date of their marriage is uncertain we can be sure that it is registered after the 5th of August 1940 due to the reference to being that of Latvian SSR citizenship.
On the 6th of May 1941, a tragic accident happened. This resulted in her father losing his life at work.
35,000 Latvians were killed during the Soviet occupation. Approx. 134,000 Latvians fled as refugees. Maybe the war is why Irmgarde and Vladislavs were divorced in 21st April 1942. Maybe they didn’t see eye to eye in politics. Vladislavs was listed as “a Pole, or Catholic” Poland is where most families were resettled at this time. Maybe he did not feel comfortable with this prospect, what happened and became of Vladislavs is unknown at this stage.
Irmgarde worked as a waitress and was now a single mother with her 4-year-old daughter Brigitta. However, she found herself out of work in August 1944 as the company was Liquidated.
I believe the reasons above may be key factors as to why on the 18th November 1944, Irmgarde and Brigitta left their home for the next journey of their life.
The loss of their country on top of everything else would have been heart-wrenching. The panic when leaving Latvia, the danger of bombing raids, the unbearable sense of hunger, and the freezing cold, all very traumatic events, especially for a single mother at the time.
It is said that when you leave a place, you must never look back. If you look back, it means you will never return. I’m sure Irmgarde had planned to return. But little did she know what was ahead of them.
Flowing toward the western Latvian province of Kurzeme. was a stream of refugees, and The Red Army was cutting off land routes in that direction. What then became known as the “Fortress Kurzeme”, had started to emerge. This area housed about 200,000 German and Latvian soldiers, as well as about half a million civilians, including these refugees. The Soviet Union had managed to establish a group of Red partisans in Kurzeme known as the “Red Arrow” Brigade, which threatened the lives of civilians. But there were also Latvian volunteer organizations helping these refugees, especially the sick and the hungry.
“The caravans of refugees were bombed by the Soviet air force, and to save our lives, we had to throw ourselves into ditches at the side of the road — just the way you now see in war movies,” she says. “We spent the first night with some farmers in Kurzeme, and they were not happy at all when the convoy rolled up to their door. The bombing of Liepāja started the same night we arrived and, if I remember correctly, three ammunition trains were blown up. The air raid sirens were screaming, there was shrapnel in the air. We hid in the cellar of a brewery. My father ran out to grab our things, but he couldn’t make it back in time and spent the air raid hiding in a huge empty barrel on the brewery grounds. He couldn’t hear a thing for the next three days because the reverberations in the barrel were so loud they damaged his hearing. We thought he would be deaf for life but, thank God, his hearing returned.” – Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga
The Germans closed down the maritime border and all refugee ships were heavily guarded and ordered to set sail for Germany. After 1 month Irmgarde and Brigitta found themselves in Wismar, Germany where they stayed for approx. 7 months, before they then moved on to Grevesnilluhk and then on to the Baltic DP Camp in Lubeck at the Artillery Barracks.
Like many people who have lived through the war, Irmgarde would have had a constant sense of danger, fear, and uncertainty. There would have been contradictory feelings amongst her and her peers; happy they had survived, but grieving for the relatives they had lost, or who had been left behind; Feelings worsened by uncertainty. Irmgarde wouldn’t have known if her family were still alive or not, with no communications back to her homeland.
Irmgarde had applied to be transported to the USA through the Luthern Church of Canada. However, Irmgardes second child was born post-war, in Western Australia.
As Brigitta was the elder child she developed feelings of protectiveness and care toward her baby sister, spending hours in lines to warm up bottles of milk. Brigitta took on the role of mother as Irmgarde was not around much anymore.24 But by age 15 Brigitta married and the baby had to be put up for adoption due to her new husband losing his job.
Brigitta looked for her mother years later to no avail, however, she did find her baby sister Marianna. It has since been found that throughout the 1960s and 1970s Irmgarde was living in Sunshine, Victoria, Not far from her children. Her death certificate in 1982 having an alias of Maria Bovloskos.
Whether Irmgarde looked for her children or not is uncertain. However, to have gone through everything she did, protecting her firstborn in this way. I do not believe that she did not care.
Kaeli Haines
I can write stories just like this for you, about your family members. The story of Imgarde Lubovski is non-fiction. To view other stories I have written click below.
