Irene Spakauskiene. Deported children of the ice

Reconstructed Siberian Yurt. Rumsiskes. Lithuania

Produced by Algis Kuzmickas, Lithuania, 2011, for the Baltic Initiative and Network.

Irene Spakauskiene was deported to the Laptev Sea region with her family when she was a little girl. It was a region with permafrost and a temperature of up to minus 50 degrees. The stay was marked by cold, hunger, disease and death, which hit the old and the children first and foremost. The deportees lived in peat huts, so-called yurts. The windows were made of pieces of ice and the inside temperature never rose above freezing.