During two summers of expeditions, the historian and his team have found the mortal remains of 14 national partisans in total. The names are known only for the national partisans exhumed last year in a forest in Bērzpils parish, Balvi municipality — Jāzeps Rūze and Staņislavs Biksāns. Turčinskis nurtures the hope of identifying those found this summer as well. However, this requires public support. For some time now, searching for the burial sites of national partisans hidden by the Cheka has been a hobby for the historian — Z. Turčinskis earns his living through agriculture on his 800-hectare farm in Zaļenieki. “History is a good thing, but you cannot live off it,” says Turčinskis. He is his own boss and is also able to finance the expeditions himself. Turčinskis' research work has not stopped — in the autumn, the Latvijas Mediji publishing house will release his monograph on the North Latgale independence units and resistance to the Soviet occupation from 1946 to 1954. It will be a story about events in North Latgale, mostly in the forests of Grīva, Nautrēni and Bērzpils in the Balvi municipality.
Giving faces and names back to those who were murdered
