On Thursday the 15th of October 2026, my family was visited by a film crew from Latvia. They came all the way from Riga to our home in Toowoomba, Australia to hear our story.
The team consisted of TV host and investigative journalist, Jānis Krēvics, film producer Inga Praņevska and cinematographer Raivo Karro. Along with producer Arta Ģiga, this team from Red Dot Media in Riga are making a documentary series about WWII called “Legion of Stars”. Their focus is on telling the stories of men who fought in the Latvian Legion and who ended up scattered across the world to make new lives for themselves as they could no longer return to their homeland. They are spending two weeks in Australia interviewing over twenty families from coast to coast.
Filming Team from Red Dot Media
Red Dot Media has been making films, documentaries and TV shows for almost 20 years and is based in Riga, Latvia.
Jānis Krēvics is host of the long-running primetime news show “Nekā personīga” (“Nothing Personal” in English). He is a hard-hitting investigative journalist especially interested in historical topics related to the KGB and the Soviet occupation of Latvia and other political issues.
Inga Praņevska is a producer especially known for the film ‘Blizzard of Snows’ (known as ‘The Rifleman’ in English) which broke all box office records in Latvia when it was released in 2019. The film is an intense and emotional representation of the life of a Latvian soldier during WWI, based on true events.
Raivo Karro is a cinematographer known for films such as the horror film ‘Welcome to Mercy’ from 2018.
Arta Ģiga is the CEO and founder of Red Dot Media with many film and TV credits to her name. She is the driving force behind the “Legion of Stars” documentary series.
What Was the Latvian Legion?
I will be writing a more detailed post about the Latvian Legion at some point in the future, but for now I will give a basic description of what it was. The Latvian Legion was a branch of the German Waffen-SS that included Latvian ‘volunteers’. The term ‘volunteer’ here is definitely a misnomer because the reality was that most had no choice in the matter and faced dire consequences if they refused. It eventually consisted of two divisions: the 15th and the 19th. The 19th Division stayed in Latvia to help in the defence of what is today known as the ‘Courland Pocket’ in western Latvia, eventually being annihilated by the Soviet Army.
The 15th Division headed west to Pomerania (German-occupied Poland) in late 1944 and ended the war around Berlin, most surrendering to the American or British Allied troops in the spring of 1945.
Around 5000 Latvian Legionnaires were taken prisoner, including my husband’s grandfather, Žanis (John) Zekants. Most of these men spent the next several months as POWs in Germany and Belgium. The Americans and British were not sure what to do with them. They had fought with the Germans, but did that mean they were Nazis? Their homeland was to be given to the Soviet Union, but did that mean they should be sent back as Soviets?
During the famous Nuremburg trials, it was decided that the SS was a criminal organization. It was also decided that groups of men that had been forced to sign up were NOT to be considered war criminals. This included the men of the Latvian Legion. They would also not be forcibly handed over to the Soviet Union for repatriation.
Although these men would have a long road ahead in creating new lives for themselves with the stain of having fought for the Germans following them like a cloud, they were finally free.
Red Dot Media’s Documentary Series
The stories of these men are not necessarily stories well-known to most Latvians as their lives continued on outside of Latvia in places like Britian, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South America. Arta Ģiga at Red Dot Media and her team have a mission to seek out and record these stories as part of the historical record for all to read about and learn from. They are travelling around the world interviewing family members of the men who participated in the Latvian Legion and other auxiliary groups during WWII.
I saw a call-out in August 2026 to families with a Latvian Legion connection in the Brisbane Latvian House newsletter and immediately made contact with Arta Ģiga . She asked me to describe John’s story and how we know what we know. They looked over our information and my website and told us they would love to come all the way to our house to film us for “Legion of Stars”.
My husband and his parents and I were very excited (and a bit nervous)!! I knew it was a wonderful opportunity that I never imagined we would ever get. They were very interested in filming our photos and John’s original WWII diaries that still exist, learning about his life and even possibly filming his final resting place in Brisbane. I was thrilled that all the thousands of hours we have put into researching and documenting John’s life, historical origins and military experience could be helpful to such a project.
We had a small panic when just a few days before the team’s arrival we couldn’t find the diaries and my father-in-law thought he had locked them in a safe and couldn’t find the key. Luckily, we ended up finding them elsewhere and didn’t have to try to break open the safe!!
The Interviews
We really had no idea what to expect. Around 10 am the team arrived and we introduced ourselves at the door. It was immediately clear that Inga and Jānis and Raivo were very friendly and down-to-earth and we had nothing to worry about. They were completely fine with my daughter taking photos behind the scenes. They were also highly efficient and within minutes they were figuring out the best place to set up, the best way to arrange the lighting and before I knew it, I was mic’d up and ready to go.
I had collected lots of materials to have on hand and had prepared thoughts based on the questions they had sent a few days before. The materials I had collected included the fragile WWII diaries, the English diary translations, photos of John and his family in Latvia, Germany and Australia, books about the Latvian Legion I had collected over the years and newspaper articles about John from both Australia and Latvia during the 1950s.
I talked about John’s experience as one of the 800 men of the Janums Battlegroup led by Col. Vilis Janums who embarked on a miraculous week-long march across Germany, running for their lives from both the Nazis and the Soviets at the end of the war, surrendering at the Elbe River to the Americans. We discussed John’s mysterious birth on the frozen Gulf of Finland during WWI in 1915. I did my best to describe the ship journey to Australia on the Anna Salen that was beset by illness, forcing the ship to stop in Freemantle where my father-in-law was one of the hospitalized children. I also got a chance to read one of my favourite diary entries. John wrote this about six weeks after the 15th Division left Latvia for Pomerania. Riga had been taken by the Reds two weeks before:
“It is a strange feeling to think that the home, where I lived just a few months ago, is now being robbed by the enemy. I regret that I didn’t bring anything with me, foolishly thinking that after a month, month and a half, I’d be home. I wonder, will I ever set foot there again?” – John Zekants, Wednesday, November 1, 1944
The interview was a very relaxed conversational-style interaction where I could share images, details of John’s early life and his military career, read diary entries and talk about my own journey of researching this family history over the years.
After they finished interviewing me, they moved on to my husband, Damien, John’s grandson. They asked him for memories and insights about his grandfather and other details about what life was like after moving to Australia. Damien read from a letter that John wrote to his cousin in the USA in the 1960s that showed how John’s war experiences followed him throughout his life. You could feel the melancholy John felt in passages like this one:
“I don’t know when and how it started, but for many years now I’ve been avoiding social life. I don’t go anywhere anymore and the only people who visit us a couple of times a year are my wife’s friends and their families…Relentless aging and constant ill health are probably the reasons for this…It would be interesting to know how fast time passes for those lucky people for whom each day is full of fun and games.” – John Zekants, March 1963
Last to be interviewed was my father-in-law, John’s eldest son, Jim Zekants. Jim started by holding up a photo of himself as a little boy. He talked about how his parents met, what life was like for an immigrant family in Australia and about his love and respect for his father.
In between takes, the cameraman, Raivo Karro, walked around the house filming interesting tidbits and candid interactions. The atmosphere was serious but also light-hearted and by the end of three hours we were given some wonderful gifts from Latvia, and said goodbye as if we were old friends.
I am so grateful that Arta, Inga, Jānis and Raivo thought it worthwhile to travel half-way around the world to far off Toowoomba to help preserve John’s story. It will take a while for the final film series to be finished and at some point there will also be an accompanying website where all the stories from around the world will be available to read.
Stories of these soldiers, their experiences risking everything to fight the Soviets, their traumatic dislocation from their homeland and their challenges in forging new lives in new countries are vitally important to honour and remember. There are thousands of descendants of these men across the world today -including almost 30 descendants of John Zekants in Australia.
Žanis (John) Zekants
Radiographer and Signalman of the Latvian Legion, survivor of the Siege of Leningrad and the Janums Battlegroup
