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Click below.

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Our journey was one filled with fatigue, cruelty, and death. We were shuttled into train carts like cattle - expected to live, breath, and survive in our own waste. Andrius and I met on your first leg of the journey - this was one of the few blessings of those trains. Our final destination was the Arctic Circle - we were castaways, destined to die there.

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They split us up into groups. Mother and I are digging ditches. Digging with our hands works better than digging with the shovels they provided us with.

Today at the ditch they made me, mother, and two other women lay down in the ditch. There was nothing we could do but obey them. I thought this was our end. Mother and I held hands as they shot bullets into the dirt next to us. I don't think they were meaning to aim at us. I think they wanted to scare us, but I'm sure if they missed the dirt and hit one of our bodies they wouldn't have cared.

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Click --> Kept by the NKVD. Stolen by Lina after drawing a portrait of the commander.

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To count the days... We all lost track of time.

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A girl, only a few years older than Lina, gave birth right before we were deported. The baby didn't make it though. It died on the train. The mother went crazy and was shot and killed in cold blood. These soldiers will point and shoot at anyone who crosses their paths the wrong way. Lina vowed to draw this shooting.

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There was a village located outside of the beet farm. If you signed the workers document stating you'd work for 25 years, you were allowed to go into town. We had to bribe friends to go into town for us and mail letters to our family and friends.

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Sung by the lithuanian men on their trains.

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Tautiška giesmė - Lithuania National Anthem Vocal

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A wretched man. Or is he? I always thought if I came in close contact with him I would rip him apart. Make him feel the pain he has made all of us feel. But he has a story too. His real name is Nikolai. I don't know what happened, but I know he helped mother, and that got him in trouble. He ended up in the Arctic with us. When he disappeared I had no idea he would be the reason we would be found.

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The NKVD were trying to get us to sign a contract stating we'd work for 25 years. Signing our names essentially meant enslavement. At first we all panicked, but there was strength in numbers as we realized if we all refused to sign there was nothing they could do. Our resistance wasn't so much about resisting work - we were working anyway. In the end, we were fighting to keep our spirits alive. If we caved and signed, Stalin would win. Some did cave eventually. But not me, mother, and Jonas. Below are the documents.

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Andrius found a stone of quartz and other minerals early in our journey. It's been passed around as a symbol of hope. We were stripped of all our possessions, aside from a few artifacts mother kept hidden in the lining of our coats. These few possessions could be traded or used to bribe soldiers, like the pocket watch that saved my brother's life and kept us together. I never traded the stone though, it stayed with us no matter what.
Read more about quartz stones here.

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