This story was collected as part of a campaign in support of the Mass Flight Memorial. If you have a story to share about your family’s mass flight experience, please write to us at news@eesti.org.au
By Rory Truupold
My father was an Estonian refugee from the Second World War—and a mountain climber. I never understood the more profound implications of who he was and what he did when I was growing up, but in the last years of his life when he finally opened up about his family’s history, I finally understood why he was the way he was.
I did a few climbs with him at his indoor climbing gym in Sydney, and one day, I found myself at the top of the rather high climbing gym wall, having an epiphany about what makes my father tick. I discovered that to be a climber, you can only focus on your next move. You can’t look down or think about what you’ve left behind. The only thing that counts is what you do next. There’s no time to consider the past or look forward to the future. There’s only what you do next.
It makes sense now, although it didn’t when I was a kid, wanting a “normal” Dad at sports events cheering me on from the sidelines rather than the quiet man anonymously wandering around picking up other people’s rubbish. He was always content and supportive of what I was doing but remained unmoved by whether or not I was a winner or a loser. It also explains why you would never hear him say a bad word or critical remark about anyone, despite how deserving of scorn the rest of us may have thought they were. The only thing that ever seemed to matter was what you did next.
When I was in my early 20s, he explained, with some coaxing, that our original Estonian family name ‘Truupold’ had previously been a Germanic name ‘Treufeldt’ which translated in English to ‘Faithfield’ and may explain why many of my friends know me as Rory Faithfield.
He survived things that most of us will never have to face. His mother, my beautiful, brave, and pioneering Estonian Grandmother Helmi — a single mother at the time — fled south from their homeland in Tallinn as the Russian Red Army approached during the Second World War. They left on the night of Wednesday, 20 September, and the Red Army invaded Tallinn on Friday, 22 September 1944. My father was 16 years old.

As refugees living in Germany, they had several narrow escapes, miraculously boarding a train out of Dresden the night the British bombers came with their infamous firestorm. And, the day he went to the movies with his friend in the city of Ulm, 70 years ago, on the 17th of December 1944—the day of its heaviest air raid.
He was a quiet, modest man who silently carried the scars, grief and knowledge of what happened to his Estonian family—both the ones who left and the ones who remained. He introduced me to the idea of doing things differently. Many kids I went to school with played rugby and cricket and went surfing. I played soccer and basketball and went skiing. He’d take us on annual family skiing holidays to the Snowy Mountains, where my parents first met on the slopes of Thredbo. He wouldn’t just take us on the usual adrenaline-inducing downhill skiing but preferred the solitary cross-country variety of exploration. He took us where no one could see whether you looked cool.
My father also introduced me to commitment — Living a life that showed me how to reach a little higher. He only ever said good things about others, which led me to conclude that it is impossible to fight the monster and not become it and that the only thing that matters is what you do next.
Initially written by Rory Truupold as: ‘Eulogy – For My Father’; In Memory Of Enn Truupold (23/6/1928 – 4/12/2014). EDITED & UPDATED 15 May 2024.
This story was collected as part of a campaign in support of the Mass Flight Memorial – a worldwide Estonian diaspora project. AESL are seeking donations until 31 July 2024 to make this monument a reality. Please consider making your donation today. If you, or someone you know, have a story to share about the mass flight experience, please write to us at news@eesti.org.au