The Cirksis Family

Peteris Čirksis as a young man As some of you will know, for about a year now I have been trying to discover what happened to my lost uncle Peteris Čirkšis. As with many things in my family history, I neglected to ask questions of my family members while I had to opportunity. Perhaps I was too young to care about history, perhaps like most young people, I thought I knew everything already. But also I think I was probably too young to know what questions to ask. So what do I know about Peteris? I know he was the son of a farmer who was able to acquire a small patch of land after the Latvian war of independence.  He was born in 1922 in Nīca near Liepājas, Latvia and died in 1941 at the hands of the NAZIs. These are the facts. But who was he really? The only account I have of Peteris' life comes from what I remember my father telling me about him. But memory is a fragile thing, second hand memory is even worse. As a researcher what I want is confirmed and verified fact...

This will just be a quick post to highlight a website that I found particularly interesting: The Center for Baltic Heritage I'm not sure why but there seems to be two web addresses for this site so I will link the other one as well...   The Center for Baltic Heritage On their about page they say they stared in 2000 after finding an alarming " lack of material and information" about the soviet occupation of the Baltic states. They state that nearly a decade later "   Individuals, organizations, and regimes continue to perpetuate misinformation rooted in Nazi and Soviet propaganda whether through ignorance or to serve their own purposes ." This is  something  that I have personally experienced while trying to find information on Latvia during WWII. A youtube search of "Latvia WW2" is instructive. One of the links is from a Russian (who will remain nameless so as not to promote links to  misinformation ) is so far removed from the fact...