The journey along the Trans- Siberian Railway [ Stories from Siberia] Along the Trans- Siberian Railway [Stories from Siberia cont] Translated from the memoirs of Irena K Our terrible freight train journey from Lithuania along the Trans- Siberian railway to Siberia took three weeks in 1941. Everyone was exhausted from the lack of fresh air. Children were tired, moody, and restless. I got badly constipated but my sister Victoria suffered from diarrhea which was a lot worse. The horrible smell from the bucket in the corner used as a toilet was disgusting. At every railway station stop, women would rush out to relieve themselves wherever they could. Everyone had to sleep on the floor. Some slept on their baggage but we were lucky to have brought our feather comforters. The daily ration of watery gruel and small slice of rye bread was not enough to satisfy our hunger, so many people got sick. Babies died in their mother’s arms. Soviet guards tossed them out and anyone else who’d died, into the forest when we stopped. Some mothers became so traumatized that they did not speak for the rest of the journey. Along the way we passed through Belarus, Novosibirsk, Krasnojarsk and Barnaul. Finally our freight train stopped at Biysk which was a town in the region of Altai Krai in Siberia, located on the Biya river, not far from the Katun river. Those who don’t know much about Lithuania’s history, will be shocked to learn that in one week of June 1941, 30,425 Lithuanian deportees in 871 freight cars, were exiled to various remote regions of the Soviet Union. Our family always referred to this time as "The time of Soviet Terror". At Biysk, people in 2 freight cars were removed and loaded into open air trucks and we were taken to the tiny remote village of Staraja Barda which was later renamed Krasnogorskoje. The rest of the freight train headed to other remote Siberian villages. It was a 500 km trip from the railway station. Later on, we found out from the local inhabitants, that Staraja Barda was originally a German village named Neusatz and that it had been established by some German Lutherans in 1884. When we lived there in 1941, it was mainly inhabited by Tartars. They were friendly towards us and asked our mother Jadze in Russian where we were from and why we’d been sent there. We asked ourselves the very same question millions of times throughout our 40 year Siberian exile.