From February 16, the Saaremaa Museum’s travelling exhibition “Life in a Milk Jug” is open in the KGB prison museum. The exhibition can be viewed at the KGB Cell Museum until September 1, 2024.
In recent years, the collections of the Saaremaa Museum have been supplemented with a series of fascinating objects and photos that shed light on the daily life of the Forest Brothers. Seven mostly 40-litre metal milk containers have arrived at the museum, which contain necessary items ranging from glasses, paper rolls, lighters, bicycle spare parts, flashlights, cameras, medical supplies and clothes, to patriotic poems and rare photographs taken in the forest. Such hiding places were quite common among the Forest Brothers of Saaremaa and extremely convenient to use: the objects were perfectly preserved in a weatherproof container, and to access them it was enough to open the camouflaged lid.
The first milk container was found at the end of the 70s, and the second in May 2016 when planting a forest near Purtsa village. The rest of the dishes found in different decades were handed over to the museum in 2021 by Mati Vendel, who is dedicated to researching the Saaremaa Forest Brotherhood. It is known that 10 milk containers used as hiding places by forest brothers have been found in Saaremaa so far. This can be considered a characteristic of Saaremaa because such finds are much rarer in mainland Estonia.
Creators of “Life in a Milk Jug”
Curator and design: Taniel Vares
Texts: Garel Pyüa
Related to items: Priit Kivi
Tablet design: Logolife OÜ