22

August 26-28, 1941

TESTAMENT

p Please convey this to my mother Mrs. Lurje, an evacuee from Latvia, now living in Kirov.

p I die for my country, for communism. It’s two months now since this fierce battle with the enemy began. For me the last stage of the fight has now come-the battle for Tallinn. There can be no retreat.

p It’s hard to die at 24, but for such a worthy cause, when millions of lives are held in the balance of history, I, too, give my life, knowing that future generations and you who remain among the living, will honour and remember us as the world’s liberators from a horrible plague. What more is there to write?

p Mum,

p Don’t take it too badly.

p I’m not the first nor the last to give my life for communism, for my country.

p Long live the U.S.S.R. and victory over the enemy!

Y.C.L. member of the Latvian
Regiment
Bina Lurje

23

p The 1st Latvian Volunteer Infantry Regiment, formed in the very first days of the war and attached to the 8th Army took part in those furious defensive battles against the German assault on Latvia and Estonia in the summer of 1941.

p In August 1941, together with other Army and Navy units, the regiment defended Tallinn, the capital of Soviet Estonia.

p Bina Lurje served in this regiment.’ Back in bourgeois Latvia he had been a fighter for his people’s liberation. The Ulmanis court had sentenced him to penal servitude for his communist activities. But that did not crush the young patriot’s will. When the Soviets set him free in 1940 he gave himself fully to his work, even though he was a sick man.

p As soon as war broke out, Bina Lurje joined the volunteers. He defended Tallinn to his last round, to his last drop of blood, and was killed in the street fighting. The memory of this brave and dedicated man left a deep trace on the minds of his comrades.

After his death, his comrades-in-arms discovered in his pocket this testament placed in his Y.C.L. card.