Ants Kaljurand

Ants "the Terrible" Kaljurand captured by the NKVD

Ants Kaljurand (or "Ants the Terrible", Estonian: Hirmus Ants; October 20, 1917 – March 13, 1951) was an Estonian anti-communist, freedom fighter and forest brother during and after World War II.

Biography[]

Kaljurand grew up in the village of Teesu near Pidula Bay on the island of Saaremaa. In 1935, he travelled to Koonga Parish (now, Lääneranna Parish) in Pärnu County and found work as a farm laborer. In 1938, he enlisted in the Estonian Defence Forces.^[1] He joined the Forest Brothers and in the summer of 1941, attacking Soviet forces in Lääne and Pärnu Counties. During the occupation of Estonia by Nazi Germany, he served on the Estonian Self-Defense Protection Association called Omakaitse and was involved on the front from 1942 to 1944.^[1] After the retreat of the Germans in 1944, he remained a prisoner of war on Saaremaa, but escaped from the prison camp in December of the same year and continued his activities in the Forest Brothers.

During the Estonia's Soviet era, Kaljurand served as the local leader of the ("Relvastatud Võitluse Liit"), founded under the leadership of Endel Redlich, in Soontaga. It was not until midsummer 1949 that the NKVD arrested him.^[2] Kaljurand was executed on March 13, 1951, in Tallinn, together with Arved Pild and Juhan Metsäär.^[3]