ToPics

Anna Stasiewicz's arrest

Anna Stasiewicz’s family was deported on 10 February 1940 because her father was a military settler.

Stasys Dambrava saw the Soviets arrive

Rumours of resettlement

The NKVD found it hard to keep the operation confidential. Silva Linarte’s family heard of the resettlement some days before 14 June 1941 from her father’s sister. But her father refused to believe it.

(Original version - in Russian)

Silva Linarte’s mother leaves behind the baby’s things

Expecting to be deported to Siberia and choosing warm coverings when arrested turned out to be an essential factor for survival. Some people took winter clothing. Others, harried by the soldiers, left crucial bundles behind. This happened to Silva Linarte’s mother, who left her youngest child’s things – the baby died on the train.

(Original language - in Russian)

Austra and Lilija describe their arrest in June 1941

Others feared the worst – such as Austra et Lilija’s father, who thought that he and his family would immediately be shot. They were arrested in the middle of the night, and the children left with only the clothes they stood up in.

Refusal of citizenship and arrest

When the Nazis invaded Poland in September 1939, Henry Welch and his mother fled to the east. They found themselves in the Soviet zone. At first his mother refused to take Soviet citizenship, and when she finally came round to the idea, it was too late and the family was arrested.

Andrei Ozerovski recalls the routine nature of the purges

When he was a primary school teacher, Andrei Ozerovski opposed the literacy policy as it was enforced by the Soviet government. He witnessed purges that had become routine in the countryside.

Arrest of Diāna Kratiša's family

Because their father was away,  Diāna Kratiša’s family were arrested two days later. The archive documents published at the time of rehabilitation, however, record the family as being in the 14 June contingent.

Andrei Ozerovski: impossible situations

After the farmers’ property was looted, they joined the resistance. It was extremely hard to take up a position, between the Germans, the Ukrainian nationalist partisans and the Soviet partisans.

A long journey to the Laptev sea

David Jozefovich, deported to Altai, was then deported further beyond the Arctic Circle.
(abridged—full version with David Josefovich’s biography)

David Jozefovitch - A long, long journey

David Jozefovitch was first deported to the Altai and then to north of the Arctic Circle.

Before annexation – the pre-Soviet period as the deportees remember it

The resettlement in June 1941 meant the families were separated. Often it was the last time that children saw their father, sentenced to forced labour. The last time, too, that their mother could display any femininity or elegance, before her face and shape were marked by forced labour.

Recalling the arrest is an opportunity to recall an idealised pre-Soviet past. The photographs of relatives, houses, and peaceful family scenes are miraculously preserved relics of a bygone age. The nostalgia of these childhood pictures is combined with pain at the loss of dear ones.