August Potsepp

On July 9, 1941, almost 250 detainees were shot in Tartu prison and the Gray House courtyard; their bodies were dumped in makeshift graves and in the prison well. August Mets was one of them.

The Year of Suffering (1940–1941)

Estonia was occupied by the Soviet Union in June 1940, after Joseph Stalin gained Hitler's agreement to divide Eastern Europe into "spheres of special interest" according to the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact and its secret protocol. On June 16 1940, the Soviet Union invaded Estonia.In August 1940, Estonia was formally annexed by the Soviet Union as the Estonian SSR.

Those who had fallen short of the "political duty" of voting Estonia into the USSR, who had failed to have their passports stamped for so voting were allowed to be shot in the back of the head by Soviet tribunals. The repressions followed with the mass deportations carried out by the Soviets in Estonia on 14 June 1941. Many of the country's political and intellectual leaders were killed or deported to remote areas (ie. Siberia) of the USSR by the Soviet authorities in 1940-1941. Repressive actions were also taken against thousands of ordinary people.

Afterwards, the battle of Tartu lasted for two weeks, and destroyed a large part of the city. Under the leadership of Friedrich Kurg, the Forest Brothers drove out the Soviets from Tartu, driving the Soviet troops behind the Pärnu River – the Emajõgi line and securing South Estonia under Estonian control by July 10. The NKVD murdered 193 people in Tartu Prison (the Grey House) on their retreat on July 8. When the Soviets were pushed out temporarily by the Germans, the bodies at the Tartu prison were found and identified. Elmar Mõt's went to identify the body of his brother, August.

He was buried at Pauluse Cemetary in Tartu. Later he had a family headstone. Which his daughter, Evi, was one day able to visit in 1994. After 1994, all of the bodies from the area were then removed, and buried ( without the individual consent of the families). They are now interred under a large monument that bears all the collective names.

The country was then occupied by Germany from 1941 to 1944. At this time frame is when Linda Potsepp and her daughter fled the country. In the face of the country being re-occupied by the Red Army, tens of thousands of people chose to either retreat together with the Germans or flee to Finland or Sweden, becoming war refugees and later, expatriates. Being considered and expatriate was surely painful for the families. Soviet forces reconquered Estonia in the autumn of 1944.