Singer-songwriter Olly Murs was born on 14 May 1984 in Witham, Essex and is 40 years old. However, as he explains at the start of his episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, he’s not just an Essex boy – he’s one-quarter Latvian. He also knows that he has circus performers in his family tree. Olly’s grandfather Eddie didn’t speak about his Latvian roots. Olly’s father Pete has tried to research his family history but, as Olly says, “I really want to unlock the doors that he has been struggling to open for all these years.”
Pete tells Olly that Eddie was born Eduards Jankovskis in Riga, the Latvian capital, in 1932. His birth certificate shows that his mother was called Veronika Jankovska. However, his father isn’t named. This is because his father was Eduards Mars, a circus performer, who was married to another woman, Katrine Berzins. Eduards and Katrine performed a remarkable musical act together – she would hold him up on a stilt-like support on her shoulders while he sang and played the guitar.
During the Second World War, Veronika sent 12-year-old Eduards away from Riga with his father and Katrine. In later life, Eddie didn’t believe that his mother loved him, because she gave him away. She tried writing to him when he was an adult but he didn’t reply, which he deeply regretted later.
“I would love to find out what happened to Veronika and where she was buried,” Pete says.
To find out, Olly goes to Riga. He’s surprised to find that the Salamonska Circus, where Eduards and Katrine performed, is a building, not a tent, and is still standing. He meets the circus’ archivist, Elvira Avota. She tells him that Eduards and Katrine’s act was known as a perch act. It was unusual for the holding person to be a woman.
An old newspaper article about the circus going on tour to Finland says one of the other circus performers was “Mademoiselle Verona, the daredevil trapeze artist”. Could this be Veronika?
Olly, who recently celebrated his marriage to fitness model Amelia Tank, says he has conflicted feelings about Eduards: “As a performer, I’m super proud of him. And then on the flipside to it, he wasn’t the most loyal husband it seemed, so that to me was a bit of a hard one to get my head around, ‘cause that’s not the kind of husband that I want to be.”
Olly meets archivist Rita Bogdanova. She confirms that records show that Veronika was Mademoiselle Verona. She even continued performing while she was pregnant with her son. After Eduards was born, Veronika was struggling financially as a young single mother. Eduards was raised by her parents for a while, while she returned to the circus. However, by 1939, the two of them were living together again.
In 1940, the Soviet Union, under the rule of Joseph Stalin, invaded Latvia. The following year, Nazi Germany seized control of the country. Then in 1944, the Soviets counterattacked and were advancing on Riga. Many Latvian civilians, fearing the Communist regime, evacuated to Germany. Eduards left with his father and his father’s wife, while Veronika stayed behind.
Olly says he wishes his grandfather could have understood that his mother gave him up to protect him. He was traumatised throughout his life and was very subdued and quiet.
“I just wish he could have understood her decisions,” Olly says, “and I really wish I could go back twenty, thirty years, and say to him, ‘Look, granddad, reach out, call your mum’.”
Olly meets Marianna Auliciema from the Latvians Abroad museum. She shows him Eduards’ 1945 registration card from a refugee camp in Germany after the war ended. By that point, he had changed his surname to his father’s name, Murs. In 1948, the Murs family settled in Harwich, Essex. Olly’s pleased to find out his grandfather came to the UK, but he still wants to know what happened to Veronika.
After the Second World War, Latvia was under Soviet rule until 1991. Dissent was strictly forbidden. The secret files of the Soviet period, now open to the public, show that Veronika was arrested in 1950 for making “anti-Soviet statements” by allegedly criticising the regime in a bar. She pled not guilty at her hearing, which was unusual as most prisoners were intimidated into pleading guilty.
Veronika was sentenced to eight years in a labour camp. Conditions in the camps were brutal and many prisoners did not survive. In 1953, Veronika was transferred to another camp in Russia. However, many prison camps were closed after Joseph Stalin’s death. In 1956, the camp closed and Veronika was released.
When she got out of prison, Veronika was desperate to find her son Eduards. She published a series of newspaper adverts saying she was searching for him and also contacted the International Red Cross. But she died alone in 1988 and was buried in an unmarked grave.
Olly visits the burial site. He’s sad that Veronika died without knowing her family, but he’s glad she was buried in a beautiful place. He also calls his father to tell him what he’s found.
“I feel like I’ve done something really special for him and the family,” Olly says. “I’m happy that I’ve been able to do this. I’ve been able to find that peace for him.”