Survivor

COEUR d'ALENE - "Do you know where Estonia is?"

Aino Kikkas asks that question as she sits in the lobby at Fairwinds, an assisted living facility in Coeur d'Alene, where the 86-year-old is enjoying a sunny afternoon with young friend Victoria Erickson.

Over the past two years, the two have become like family, Kikkas in the role of loving grandmother, Erickson the role of adoring granddaughter.

They have lunch, visit shops, have coffee, and talk. Lots of talk. But it's not often about the weather, about family, about politics or religion.

Kikkas shared a story of survival. A story of dodging bullets and bombs. A story of fleeing, hiding and hoping.

As Erickson listened, she became fascinated by Kikkas' account of her life starting in Estonia more than 70 years ago. She devoured the details, and was quite simply, amazed.

And yes, she knows where Estonia is.

"How she made it through it all, I don't know," Erickson said.

Kikkas was born in Estonia, a state in Northern Europe. She lived there through much of her childhood, with her parents, and her brother, and up to age 13, she was happy.

"Then the Russians came in," she said.

She was there in 1939 when the Soviet Union ships and planes arrived and Estonia was forced to allow the USSR to station troops there as part of a nonaggression pact between Germany and Russia before World War II.

"Very soon they became very brutal," Kikkas said.

She was there in June 1940 when, with war under way, Soviet troops invaded the small country of a few hundred thousand.

She was there when Soviets troops began pounding on doors and taking mom and dads, brothers and sisters, young and old, away in the middle of the night.

Thousands, she said, were packed into cattle cars, bound for prison camps in Russia, or sent to Siberia. Thousands were executed.

"And they really didn't do anything. They were just Estonians," Kikkas said, her voice faltering.

The Soviets came looking for Aino's 20-year-old brother and military father, too, who were in hiding. When Aino heard that knock on the door, so loud and so hard it almost broke the door, she froze.

There was no pretense by her visitors to be friendly. No smiles. The soldiers put a gun to the 13-year-old's head.

"They kept telling me, 'You better tell where your brother is or where your father is, or I'm going to shoot you.' He was kind of clicking that gun."

"I was just trembling, scared to death," she said.

But the teen didn't talk.

"My mother told me, 'Don't you ever tell anybody where they are. If they find out, they will kill them and us, too."

So Kikkas told her interrogators her brother and father left early that morning and didn't return.

"I said, 'What did you do with them?'"

The ruse worked. The troops left the Kikkas home that time, but she knew they would return.

"We had to go into hiding, stay with relatives, friends, one night here, the next night there. We didn't know what was going to happen to us.

"They were brutal, Russians were," she said.

She recounted a story of being on the run and hiding when the Soviets arrived and searched the home. Two soldiers came downstairs, and pointed guns at the trembling Aino Kikkas and her family.

"We knew they would shoot us," she said.

It was then, she believes a miracle happened.

"Did you see anybody," someone shouted from upstairs.

The soldiers, for reasons she still doesn't understand, walked away. They must have been Christians, she said.

"I was sure they were going to kill us," she said.

There was hope for a better life when the Germans arrived in June 1941, and drove the Soviets out.

Estonians "were quite glad they came."

"We knew they couldn't be worse then what we came through," Kikkas said.

German soldiers were friendly, Kikkas said, because Estonians were "no danger" to them.

"They saw how we suffered. They were very compassionate."

Life returned to normal, for a time. Aino's brother and father came home, and because she spoke fluent German, she got along well with troops.

"German soldiers loved to talk to folks," she said, laughing. "They wanted to be home. They were human beings like everybody else. They wanted to be with their families."

It didn't last.

Russia's Return

In 1944, the Red Army roared in, drove out the Germans and reclaimed control of Estonia.

It was then Kikkas ran for her life.

Over the next year, she would come perilously close to death - several times. Separated from her family, Kittas wound her way to Poland, to Prague, to Berlin, hiding, staying with relatives or strangers, wherever she found temporary safety.

"My plan was to go west, where Americans are coming in."

In Berlin, she found herself under fire from both sides - Russians and Americans.

"They were shooting in with cannons and the Americans were bombing, so that was a horrible place to be."

With thousands homeless, with cities in ruins, she fled to Hamburg, staying with a family she tracked down via an address given to her long ago by her father.

She lived in a four-story apartment, often forced to shelters when bombs fell, sleep was rare.

"One day I decided I don't care, I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to sleep. I'm so tired of everything. I lost everything. If I die, I die. So I stayed, and I slept."

For several days, she refused to go, even with nearby explosions. One night though, as she lay in bed, for the first time, she was afraid.

"Suddenly, I got a terrible fear in my heart," she said.

She walked to the basement where a few others hunkered down. Then, the bomb hit.

The building crumbled. Flames erupted. Streets and asphalt burned. People ran, screaming. Aino ran, too.

"All I had was my nightgown, coat and shoes," she said.

In the Crossfire

Some days, Kikkas was so weak, it was difficult to walk. Food was scarce, hunger a constant.

"One day, all we had to eat was grass," she said. "That's all we ate. We had nothing else."

When she traveled by foot, she hid under a simple white sheet when Russian planes passed overhead.

"When Russians saw us, they came down and started to shoot machine guns," she said. "A lot of people got shot."

For some reason, the sheet proved effective cover.

"Don't ask me why I had it. I have no idea," Kikkas said, laughing.

Another home she was in ended up on the front lines in a battle between the American and German soldiers.

"Our little house was right in the middle," she said.

A cannon shell, she said, went through her bedroom, over her head, and exploded in the field. As the fighting continued, she and others crawled to the basement, where they prayed.

Prayers were answered.

The next morning, they heard voices just outside the home. They were speaking English. The Americans had arrived.

Kikkas was happy to see them - but cautious, too.

"I said, 'Not German, not German.' I wanted to stay alive."

"We were not the enemy," Kikkas told them.

Life in America

With the arrival of U.S. troops, life improved.

Kikkas worked as an interpreter for the American military police and the German civilian police.

"I can't remember if I got paid for it or not," she said, smiling.

Other countries, including the U.S., opened their doors. Many of Kikkas' friends headed to Australia. She balked. America, she decided, would be her next home.

In 1944, when her ship arrived in New York, she had $8 in her pocket. One of the first things she wanted to buy was a chocolate.

But she had a question. How much? A quarter, she was told.

"I didn't know what a quarter was," she said.

The English language was difficult to master. She recalls sitting by someone who ordered a hot dog.

A hot dog for lunch?

"I thought, 'Oh my goodness, Americans are eating dogs,'" she said, laughing.

She lived in New York, worked different jobs, attended business college at night, studied English, eventually moving to Los Angeles. The idea of swimming in the ocean and relaxing on a beach - in the winter - was a dream. That would be paradise.

"If you knew what I've gone through, that would be something special to do," she said.

She did it.

She later landed a job with an oil company.

"I made good money, I lived in luxury, I traveled like a millionaire," she said.

She married, and she and husband, Cliff, arrived in North Idaho in the 1970s, attracted by the lakes and mountains. They were married 41 years before he died of cancer in 2002.

Kikkas has lived at Fairwinds since 2004.

"Oh, it's nice and peaceful here. I love it," she said.

Best friends

Erickson is glad she and Kittas are friends. She has heard details of a life and what one young woman endured during World War II - stories that few know, but more should.

"Young people don't know all these details of how she survived," Erickson said.

Kikkas returned to Estonia 49 years after she left, in 1993, not long after it again became a free country with the collapse of the USSR. It was strange, she said, that she needed a passport and visa to enter the very country where she was born and raised.

She still shudders at what her country went through during the war. Josef Stalin, Soviet ruler, was brutal not just to Estonians, but to his own people, she said.

She wants people to know what happened.

Which is part of the reason today that she is delighted to know Erickson - and honored to share her life story.

"She means to much to me. I love her dearly," Kikkas said.

The bond between Kikkas and Erickson is forged in those stories recounted by Kikkas.

"She didn't have a lot of freedom growing up," Erickson said. "She came here, she had freedom. Remember that. You never know what's going to happen, how much more freedom we have left."

Kikkas just laughs at a comment that she lived an extraordinary life. She sits, relaxed, and smiles.

"It was not my choice," she said.