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At the initiative of its center, the website www.lietuviaisibire.lt was launched, where the names and destinations of the deportees and prisoners are found. Are people interested in the destinations of the deportees? Are you writing letters? Is this part of the story as relevant as it used to be?
In the early days, he became particularly interested, and later attention began to gradually decline. It is true that website traffic has doubled, people are really curious, especially young people. We receive many emails. The material and surnames are not new, it has already been printed in our published books, but it is more widely available, the online version of the lists has been supplemented, which is why we have received so much interest.
There is a summary excerpt from the database created to publish our books. It is true that there is no complete database here, there is more information in the books. Therefore, if a person is interested, he will also have to open the books, we would greatly encourage him. The hidden idea was that people flipped through the books because they were in all the libraries, there really was a lot of information, it is more widely available than can be found online.
We received several letters, it is true that there are already few deportees alive. Relatives write to us more, especially grandchildren, grandchildren of deportees. Contact and comments are very important, we respond to every email.
Write to get more information or supplement the information we already have. He especially wants to add to the biographies of those people who have been marked with us as deportees of “unknown destiny”. Loved ones write to say that, say, one or the other people has returned. This is important information because so far we cannot say exactly how many have returned from exile and how many have remained there.
There is also a lot of confusion about first and last names, some documents have different last names, sometimes we write two variants of first and last names, because, for example, when writing in Russian, last names are often distorted, one or another letter is changed. When family members notice discrepancies, we sign, clarify, or ask for something. This is valuable information that we collect after a while.
How did the occupation authorities compile lists of deportees at the time? Who and where decided who would go to Siberia and which not?
Documents were issued in Moscow, precise instructions on how to organize deportations. And the lists were compiled based on what was found in Lithuania. The lists of the Lithuanian population were simply not destroyed during the change of government, the lists of people belonging to riflemen, military and exploration organizations remained.
Counties had their own lists, the military theirs. On the basis of these lists, lists of deportees were formed. The Soviets did not list people through villages and farms.
Birutė Burauskaitė / Photo by Justinas Auškelis
He looked at the inventory books, checked how much land a man has, if he was employed, he was an officer. In 1941, people had no idea that it might be dangerous to be a marksman, an officer, or a member of some other national organization. The lists were compiled scrupulously by the occupying power, approved by the Council of Ministers, and all have survived. These were called lists of deportees sentenced to exile.
The lists began to be made as soon as the occupation began in 1940. At that time, the people were already arrested in silence and accused of a non-existent application of Russian Soviet laws, which were not in force in Lithuania at the time. The exiles were compiled lists for entire families, the head of the family was accused of obstructing the revolutionary movement, of working for the bourgeois government.
Reading these documents, the attitude of the Soviet Union towards the Baltic States is very visible. They were treated as temporarily lost territories. The Soviets failed to settle here in 1918, and everything that happened afterwards was seen as an indictment against the people who lived here.
Suppose that if a person worked in the civil service, they, according to the Soviets, worked for the bourgeois system. Today, these allegations, especially from 1941, sound extremely paradoxical.
How were places of exile “distributed”? Why did deportees meet where people had not lived before?
Stalin’s opinion was that exiled nations should disappear. Moscow’s order was to deport people as deeply as possible to Russia. Soviet officials in Lithuania could not influence where people would be deported. All decisions were made in the Kremlin, where it is planned where people will travel, what benefits are expected of them or vice versa, to whom they are condemned.
The first deportees were exiled during the war. Men met in camps or factories, and women, children and grandparents were, for example, transported to the Lena River Delta, a place where no one lived because living conditions here were extremely harsh.
As soon as they arrived, the people were landed on a wasteland, where they first had to house their guards and executioners, and only then did they take care of themselves. In the first winter, Lithuanians lived there in winter houses made of moss and died en masse. The strongest had to catch fish in Lena’s icy waters, having only primitive gear and standing halfway in the cold water.
Satisfied guards watched them at the same time, keeping a close watch to make sure no one stole the fish, so there was a risk of being shot.
Not only Lithuanians suffered there, but also Germans and deer in the Leningrad area. These people also died en masse. No one saved the exiles, no one feared their deaths.
The flow of people to hostile places was so great that the Soviets did not care about the deaths. There are a number of documents that survive as officials write and demand more inmates because the work needs to be done and the former have already gone extinct. Men, teenagers with women, and the elderly crossed the forest working hard in the mines. If they did not make a “norm”, they did not receive 400 grams of bread, but only 200 grams.
Lena’s mouth was the scariest place in exile. In 1948, people were still being transported to Igarka, where there were also terrible living conditions. There was no primary wasteland after all, at least there was something there before.
Until 1953, all places of exile were life-threatening, and living and working conditions were difficult everywhere. And looking at the documents, it is clear that the local government was forced to provide housing for the incoming deportees, but this was almost never done.
Exile (photo from wikipedia.org)
The Soviet Union and its industry would have benefited much more from the work of the deportees if they had paid some attention to the people, their needs. There was a lack of elemental humanity.
Was it possible to redeem, to be removed from the exile lists? Were people fleeing places of exile?
It was possible to disappear from the lists if family and friends “had access” to its creation or approval. But these were trivial events, and it was the case that those lists were reaffirmed and “escaped” by those who had escaped.
It is true that they were transporting and not according to the lists, it happened that only the soldiers and the NKVD simply pass through the city, picking everyone up. Or, during the meeting, 10 families take it for the lists and then get drunk, so throw the lists away and take whatever is useful.
Later it was written from places of exile that there are people, and here are the cases of exile: no. It turned out that people were there even without their artificial “case”.
During deportation, people also tried to flee, but most of the time it ended tragically. Then the house was surrounded and arrested by everyone. The dates of the deportation were very hidden. Even those who carried out the deportations did not know exactly when they would occur.
It is true that the deportations of 1948 were not so secret, people were warned and some fled. Elsewhere, it happened that the parents hid, but the children stayed at home. These were children arrested and deported. The parents themselves had to request exile after the children.
And escapes from places of exile were common, as soon as the war ended, people began to flee from places of exile. They traveled home in various ways because they had no documents and it was not possible to buy a train ticket without documents. And anyway, the train stations were a more secure area, there were constantly soldiers, security service agents and the militia.
Even after returning to Lithuania, it was not easy, I had to hide and throw my feet. Those who returned legally, after the deportees had already been released and persecuted, were not allowed to stay in Lithuania. Therefore, many settled in Latvia, in the Kaliningrad region.
Are people still interested in exile today? How does the younger generation see this?
It is interesting that the third generation of deportees, grandchildren, are more interested in deportations and the past. It is an interesting phenomenon that is noticed throughout the world. Suppose grandchildren are also more interested in the Holocaust, not children. Apparently, for the second time it still hurts, or maybe you just wanted to forget for a long time, hide certain facts. And here are the grandchildren, great-grandchildren, who want to know their roots.
Exile (photo from wikipedia.org)
The children of deportees only want to know part of their history, it is a painful part of the past, they have been discriminated against by their parents’ past for a long time, so even now some of them take it delicately. And here the grandchildren are curious, it is important that they know the relative’s past, they often ask with various questions and comments.
We are especially lacking research on the lives of the deportees upon their return, their social and psychological existence. We have a lot of factual material on what and how it was, but little on how people lived, survived and felt. How they did it when they returned, what pains they brought back.
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