Verners Cinis was born October 4, 1927 in Rudbārži, Latvia and passed away peacefully on January 7, 2019 in Hamilton, Ontario, at the age of 91. In the autumn of 1944, with the approach of the Baltic Strategic Offensive Verners, his sister and stepmother left Latvia to avoid deportation to Siberia. They headed to Germany where Verners, at the age of 17, joined a division of the German army that was set to head to Latvia’s western front to help protect it from Russian advances. The division made it to Grudziadz, Poland where Verners was wounded, captured by the Russians and sent to a prisoner of war camp in Karelia where he spent four years.
When the prisoners of war were set free in 1949, they were sent back to Germany in cattle cars. Verners could never forget the sight at the Brest-Litovsk railway station where he saw other cattle cars filled with Latvians that had been captured and were being sent to Siberia.
Verners spent one year in a DP camp in Oldenburg, while healing in a sanatorium. From 1950 to 1955 he served in the Labor Service Engineer Construction Company of the United States Army in Europe. In 1955 Verners emigrated to Canada.
In Toronto Verners joined the Latvian Relief Society and for 30 years he was an active member in several capacities. During all of these years he took advantage of every opportunity to remind the local community about Soviet Union’s aggression and oppression of Latvia and other countries under Soviet rule.He organized and took part in numerous demonstrations, wrote letters to government officials and local newspapers. He was active in the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN) movement and the World Anti-communist League. He had diligently collected information from newspaper articles at that time, and these materials have now been donated to the National Archives in Latvia.
When Latvia regained independence, Verners turned to sending generous support to his hometown schools in Rudbārži and Skrunda. He was also an avid supporter in the development of the Latvian National Guard for which he was granted the highest award “Par tēvu zemi un brīvību” (For Fatherland and Freedom).
Verners motto has always been: “Vēl cīņa nav galā.” (The battle is not yet over).
The League of Ukrainian Canadians mourns with sorrow the loss of our long-time colleague, friend and true Latvian patriot.
