A Personal Obituary for Mart-Olav Niklus by Carmen Jondral-Schuler

I met Mart-Olav Niklus in Tallinn during a delegation trip to Estonia organized by the International Society for Human Rights (ISHR) in 2017. At 83, he didn’t seem like the man marked by years of Soviet imprisonment I had imagined. On the contrary, he greeted me with a friendly, engaged smile, and his good sense of humor shone through in conversation. A striking feature was a T-shirt he wore with the word “Gulag” and a quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s book “The Gulag Archipelago”:

“The line separating good and evil runs not between states, nor between classes, nor between political parties, but right through the heart of every human being, and through all human hearts.”

Niklus liked T-shirts with a message. A few months later, he participated as a speaker at the ISHR autumn conference in Frankfurt and gave me one of those T-shirts with the Gulag quote, which I’ve worn to every IGFM annual conference in Bonn ever since.

In 2022, a delegation of ISHR and BdV (Federation of Expellees) members met Mart-Olav Niklus again in Latvia. And once again, Niklus was wearing a T-shirt with a striking slogan. This time, it’s the quote “Fear is a habit; I am not afraid,” attributed to the Burmese Nobel Peace Prize laureate and human rights icon Aung San Suu Kyi. Rarely does a quote fit a person as well as it does Mart-Olav Niklus. Courageously and fearlessly, he pursued his path as a human rights and freedom fighter, paying a high price for it. Despite external oppression, he maintained his inner freedom, giving no space to fear.

The group visited, among other places, the newly designed permanent exhibition at the Occupation Museum in Riga, as well as a special exhibition, under the expert guidance of a museum staff member. The modern and interactive permanent exhibition, with its documents from everyday life in exile and imprisonment, is deeply moving.

As we were guided through the exhibition, Mart-Olav Niklus repeatedly paused at portraits of political prisoners, including those of the most famous political prisoner Latvia’s Gunars Astra, or the Latvian poet and national hero Knuts Skujenieks. And he mentions, almost as an aside, that he shared a cell with them in the Mordovian and Perm prison camps and served his sentence there. During his long years in prison, Niklus forged many friendly relationships with numerous dissidents.

We stand in front of a display case. Mart-Olav Niklus silently contemplates the camp clothing on display, with its coarse fabric, padded boots, and cap, almost as if he were seeing it for the first time.

The modernity of the exhibition, with its lighting effects, presents a stark contrast; perhaps this is what creates a distance from the object.

In fact, during our encounters, Mart-Olav Niklus never brought up his imprisonment in the camps, nor did he seek out a conversation about that.

The museum is still awaiting a special exhibition, “The USA: A safe haven when the homeland is occupied, 1940–1991.” It focuses on the role of exiled Latvians who supported the resistance against the Soviet occupation through protests abroad and petitions. Here, too, Niklus is surprised to find himself on a protest poster demanding his own release, and he is visibly pleased.

The museum employee, who of course knew who he was dealing with, is filled with respect and asks him to sign the museum’s guestbook, which Niklus gladly does. Later, as an important eyewitness, he was interviewed by researchers for the museum’s archive.

I will never forget this special visit to the Occupation Museum in Riga, with this legend. Rest in peace, dear Mart-Olav Niklus.

Carmen Jondral-Schuler is Attorney at Law and Member of the Board of the German Section of ISHR.

Photos © Carmen Jondral-Schuler