The story was sad, but the book was amazing. 

Most of us knew about the Nazi killed massive Jews during the 2nd world war. However, maybe not many of us know that the Josef Stalin killed more than 20 millions people during his reign of terror. 

In 1939, the Soviet Union occupied the Baltic States -Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. After some time, Kremlin drafted a list including bunch of people who were considered anti-Soviet. Those people would be murdered, or sent to prison, or deported into slavery in Siberia. Most of them were well-educated, such as, doctors, lawyers, teachers, military servicemen, writers, business owners, musicians, artists, and even librarians. 

The First deportations were occurred on June 14, 1941. 

The author was borned and raised in the United States, whose parents were Lithuanian. She did a lots of research works during the trips to Lithuania. She met with family members, survivors of the deportations, historians and so on. The characters in this book are fictional, but the last doctor mentioned was real. He arrived in the Arctic in time to save many lives. 

Those survived spent 10 - 15 years in Siberia. Those Baltic states lost more than 1/3 of their population during the Soviet annihilation. No wonder why they hate Russians even nowardays. 

A 15 years old girl, her 10 years old little brother and their mother were arrested in their home. Her Papa didn’t return from work and they didn’t know if he’s alive. They were forced into a train car with other people. After a while, she found out that the train car named thieves and prostitutes. But inside the train car, was only bunch of women, children and injured men. They spent some weeks with only limited food and water inside the closed train car, they were sent to labor camps thought Russia and Siberia. 

They were strong and wise, the mum was a really hero. She was so brave, so kindness to everybody.  In her deep heart, she had hope that her husband was still alive, and one day they would go home. Sadly, she didn’t make it, even the first winter in the North Pole camp. Until the end, she still had the wedding ring.She didn’t sell it to bribe the Soviet people.

The little brother, has been through a lot, was also very brave. They were together to support each other. He was only 11 years old. I cannot image a kid was taken from how so young and spent most of time in the camp, seeing starving and dying people, seeing the war, seeing the most horrible thing in the world. When he was back home, he was already a men, not a boy anymore. How wound in his deep heart?

Hunger, cold, dirty, work all day long, death….  but also with love. 

The girl and the other boy. They supported to each other, they gave the strength to each other. He did the very risky thing for her. It is so cute when he told her his birthday. And gave her the very valuable book as a 16 years old birthday gift.  I could not stop crying when I found out they have to be separated. 

Late, when she found his handwriting in the book at his birthday day….  I was so touched. 

And I am so glad that now the three countries were independent from Soviet Unions.

the map below is the route they were sent to the arctic. 

@宁静的夏     建议你读英文原版，英文词汇没有很难

@谁解花语     姐姐，如果你喜欢《追风筝的人》，这本书你也应该会喜欢这本书《西伯利亚的眼泪》，讲述的是1941年苏维埃占领拉脱维亚，从一个15岁女孩的角度讲述了她和妈妈还有弟弟如何被送去西伯利亚，北极圈极冷的地方的真实故事。读完之后你就会对当年的苏维埃有更多的了解了。原本我只知道希特勒杀死很多犹太人，其实被淹没的一个事实是斯大林统治期间杀死的无辜的人更多。