Silva Linarte tells of her meeting with the wolves (Original language - in Russian)

“I remember the school was 18 km away, we had to walk there, not every day, of course, but all the same. We had to walk through the taiga in winter with snowstorms, the cold and the wolves.

And one day, we were not far from the village of Ulyukol [Улюкол]. We children, Lithuanians and Latvians, were walking along. And then we saw some little lights in the distance. They were a long way a way and all round us. We didn’t realise what they were. We saw that the circle was closing in. And when it was near us, we saw that it was wolves. Everyone was very afraid. We started screaming, not to make them go away, but because we were terrified. We screamed with fear and the wolves began to move back. The circle became wider again. They didn’t go away immediately. That was their system: they widened the circle before they went.

Gosh, we were afraid!”