BioGraphy

Ona Bulataitė was born to farming parents in Lithuania in 1929. In 1949, the family was deported from their home village, Trakinė, in two groups: first the parents, then Ona and her sister. No one knew why they were being deported. The journey to Siberia took a month, and they were short of water and food.

Ona and her sister were taken to the village of Tagna, in the Irkutsk region. Conditions there were harsh: there were shortages, especially of food, and her work, cutting wood, was so hard that she imagined herself walking back to Lithuania to escape it. However, life slowly improved: she began to receive money instead of wages in kind and was able to move around more freely.

Following her release, Ona took a trip to Lithuania, after which she decided not to return to live in her native country: her family's house in Trakinė had been destroyed and Ona did not have enough money to resettle.

The interview with Ona Bulataite was conducted in 2014 by Alain Blum and Emilia Koustova.