Arrest and deportation

“We didn’t live long like that. They came for us, ‘Get ready to go’ and off we went. The children were put on a cart, a whole cartload of children, and they drove us off. They drove us off worse than dogs. In those wagons, the goods wagons, all on top of each other, there were sorts of bed frames, planks, that’s how we slept, all day we were sitting and lying, and the journey went on a very long time. Where to? Up in the north, the Arkhangelsk region, later they called part of it the Vologda region, but it’s all the same. We were taken a long, long way. We suffered, there were no lavatories, we held ourselves, men and women, children and old people, worse than dogs, starving and freezing, and finally we got to the village of Privodino on a bend in the Northern Dvina.”