Priit Vesilind

Priit Juho Vesilind (4 January 1943 – 3 November 2023) was an Estonian-born American senior writer and photojournalist of National Geographic magazine and an author of nonfiction.

Early life and education

Vesilind was born during World War II in Tallinn, Estonia, then under German occupation as Generalbezirk Estland. His father, Paul Eduard Vesilind, was an engineer for an automobile manufacturer and his mother, Aino Vesilind (née Rebane), worked at a bank.

In 1944, when Priit was one and a half years old, Soviet Air Forces bombers struck Tallinn and the Red Army began an attack on the city as the Soviet Union sought to drive the Germans out and reestablish its own occupation of Estonia. Aino took Priit and his brother Aarne and fled by train to Czechoslovakia. Left behind in Estonia, Paul Eduard Vesilind later traveled by ship to Danzig and rejoined his wife and children in Czechoslovakia. From there they made their way along railway tracks westward across southern Germany, carrying Priit in a wheelbarrow, subsisting on dried bread, taking cover from Allied air attacks on the German railroads, and sheltering in the haylofts of barns. As the war ended in May 1945, they encountered United States Army troops advancing into Germany and came under the custody of the United States. The family then spent over four years in a displaced persons camp in Geislingen an der Steige, West Germany, with more than 4,000 other Estonians.

In September 1949, sponsored by a Lutheran church, the family emigrated to the United States, settling in Beaver, a small town in Western Pennsylvania where he spent his childhood.