Juliana Zarchi describes her arrival in Central Asia (Original version - in Russian)

Juliana Zarchi was born in Kaunas in 1938 of a Jewish Lithuanian father and German mother. When Lithuania was invaded by the Nazis, her father fled to the East, where he was murdered by the Einsatzgruppen. While only a little girl, she got out of the Kaunas ghetto and managed to survive during the Nazi occupation.

In August 1945, as part of the purges of people of German origin, she was forcibly resettled by the Soviets with her mother to Tajikistan in Central Asia, and only returned in 1962.

In this extract, Juliana remembers her first impressions on arriving in this foreign land in Central Asia and how the resettlers were sent to pick cotton on the kolkhoz.