The Deportation to the Camps of Kraslag and the Siberian Exile

At dawn of June 14, 1941, a week before Germany attacked the Soviet Union, the armed NKVD (the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) officials appeared unexpectedly at the households of the families targeted for deportation; searched their homes. Everything was turned upside-down. People were given a very short time to pack only necessary items, and then their belongings were loaded onto the trucks. Expelled people were placed on their tied down belongings in the same trucks, and, shortly after, were delivered to the nearest railroad stations. Special trains of filthy cattle cars watched by military guard forces of the NKVD waited for deportees there. The cattle cars had small side hatches with iron bars on them and built-in plank beds.

The deportees from the city of Ukmerge and the shtetls of Ukmerge Uyezd (district) were taken to Ionova railroad station (people from other places – to their nearest stations). At the stations, men were separated from their families. Most men were transported to the labor camps of Stalin’s GULAG, while women and children were transported to exile in Altai Territory. The final point of deportation was unknown to the exiles right up to the time of their arrival.

People were crammed like sardines in a tin can. Many of them felt doubt and despair. Little children were crying. An obnoxious smell filled the cattle cars.

Now it is known that about 34,000 inhabitants of Lithuania were deported without trial on that day. Twenty-five percent of them were Jewish, while only about 10 percent of the prewar population of the Republic was comprised of Jews. Among the expelled were "socially dangerous elements" including infants, teenagers, and old people. In one of the special trains with deportees was my mother Eidl Rykliansky and myself, eight-year-old boy. My father Tsemakh Rykliansky traveled in another special train.

The special trains took us to the East. During the stops we could only communicate with the local people on the train stations’ platforms through the small latticed side hatch openings. Along the way to Siberia, we found out that the German troops had invaded the Soviet Union and that almost the entire Lithuanian territory had already been occupied by June 25, 1941. It is very hard to describe our state of mind. We were very worried about all our relatives who had remained in Lithuania, especially about my elder brother Isaac, who was not deported with us. He was in a children recreation camp on the coast of the Baltic Sea in Palanga, near the German border, at the time we were being deported. We knew nothing about where the men, including my father, were transported. Great anxiety seized all of the people who were in the cars of the special trains.

At last, the special trains reached their destination, the railroad station of Biysk (Altai Territory).

On arrival from Lithuania, all expelled people were assigned to live in different places. We were transported deep into the Altai Mountains. The armed NKVD convoy escorted us all the way through. They were rude and insulting to the exiles.