Pasha sits in the warm evening sunlight as we talk about her life in the single, small room she inhabits everyday. She is frequently moved to tears as we discuss her exile to Kazahkstan, "[The night we were deported] …they took us to the police station in Floresti (a nearby town to Vadeni in the Northern region of Moldova). From there, they put us in a cattle car on a train. There was nothing inside. No toilet, no food, nothing, and thus we travelled for 2 months … some people died [during the journey], inside the train cars.” – Pasha Graur

Her memories, like many memories from deportees, regularly jump from the distant to the more recent as she tells me the day that she requested her sister Ana Graur, along with her family, to take her in and let her be part of their family due to the lack of care she found with her in-laws in her old age, “My daughter-in-law... Better not talk about her. Not even once did she take care for me and she never will. She once went to a neighbor to tell her that if I weren’t going to leave, she would pack my bags and kick me out… And so I… wrote a letter to Alex (Ana Graur’s son) and Ludmilla Munteanu (Ana Graur’s daughter-in-law, with whom she lives), to their children, to the relatives from Italy and to my sister and I wrote them, ‘Please accept me into your family, please come and take me as soon as you can, for I have had enough, I can't take it any more! Other people have food to eat, but although I have money, I starve, for I can't go and buy what I need.”

Pasha can no longer walk due to extreme leg pain and is confined to her one room in the small separate house she and Ana share. Pasha often thinks about her death saying, “I keep telling them to bury me next to our mother, for all my life I've been among strangers.”

Pasha keeps an old photo of her younger self with her children beside her. It typically acts as a bookmark in her old Cyrillic-written Orthodox bible. She loves talking about her children.

February 4th is her son's birthday, two days before my own and as I visit her she is very sad. Her son died a few years earlier. “My most precious Vitalin died in 2004.” She says.

She said she would try not to cry about her son on his birthday, but that it is difficult to think of the loved ones she has lost in her life, her brother, her younger sister, her mother and her son. She regularly kisses the old photograph as if trying to kiss the people within them.

When Pasha's son, Leonid, came to visit from Ukraine, she lamented that he spent so little time with her. Leonid, in his youth, was a professional soccer player, a fact that Pasha is proud of despite the fact that it required him to be away often. One day, wearing a red dress sent to her from family in Italy, she said, "I dressed nicely, yet Leonid doesn't come."

A common theme to the deportee’s story is that the story did not end after Stalin’s death. The larger story is about the social and political repression felt by deportees after they returned to Moldova, as well as the long process of building their lives back up after having everything taken away. The resilience of the deportees who experienced this history shows that through great pain, life does go on.

“The deportation occurred in 1951, but we were among the last to be taken away, because they had a hard time catching my mother. Given the fact we were only children, they had to catch my mother first. They had intended to take us away, like they did to our grandfather, around 1949 or 1941, but we were caught in 1951.” Says Ana. When the Graur women were deported to Crasnai Octeabri, Kazakhstan, Ana, Pasha and Maria with their mother, Maruşca, sitting in front of them, had a family portrait made, a common practice at the time.

“We had a rough childhood. My mother would work with the pigs [in Kazakhstan]; the poor dear would cook food in huge pots, she would clean, and do everything that the big bosses told her to do. They

wouldn't give us much food. Our poor mother would place some of the pigs' food at the bottom of the pot and would cover it up with a layer of weeds and a layer of horse dung so that no one would catch on [that we were hiding] extra food. She'd tell them that the dung was for the walls. She would visit our house and set the dung and weeds aside so that we could eat to our heart's content. My mother was glad that she could feed us somehow. It was really hard at the beginning. Then, we managed to slowly build our own little clay house with our bare hands and with the help of [our neighbours]… This is how we lived, among strangers, through no blame of our own. Every day was filled with hard labor, tears and sorrow. We got a desperate letter from home, which told us that they'd captured all the [Moldovans] in Romania (where their father was in hiding). They were brought to Odessa, tried, and sentenced for life all the way in the Kurile Islands. I never heard from my father. We know that a lot of prisoners and fellow villagers died there in terrible [Gulag] conditions.” – Ana Graur

Before the family had been deported to Kazakhstan, Ana and Pasha’s mother was able to successfully hide from the Soviets for a few years, working by night and walking miles between villages to make money for her family, “We would wash her feet [when she arrived home at night], but the water would become red, for she was walking barefoot, poor soul, through the woods and thorny bushes.” – Pasha Graur

This is the only view to the outside world Pasha usually receives from day to day. Occasionally, she will stand and wave to us from her small window as we go about our daily lives. “Now, I want nothing else than to be able to walk, as I used to be able to. So help me God, even as there are other people who cannot even raise from their beds!” – Pasha

Pasha also has a quiet anger living inside of her as she sits with the memories of her life, which will occasionally come to light, “[Stalin], snooping around in our country, what was he doing here? Siberia, Kazahkstan, my illness… That's why one reaches old age and can no longer stand on one's feet. My heart aches from all these… All my bones ache… Life was tough… My pension is not sufficient to cover my medications… I lost my son, my husband… I am the only one left, thank God [my family has] taken me in… they visit me and bring me food and I say to them, ‘Thank you so much, may you have a long life!’”

Ana sits in the family kitchen as she prepares coltsunasi, a traditional Moldovan dumpling, in the dead of winter. I see that she is staring quietly into nothing and I ask her what she is thinking about. She responds simply with, “My sister, my daughter in Italy, my brother who died. I am remembering my family.”

As we talk more and she laments her age, I joke that she is still young. We laugh together and she later says, “I don’t know if I was ever young. My childhood was so sad, I don’t think I was a child then.”

We try to recover a lost image of Ana and Pasha with their family and their father, Nichifor, who fled the Soviets, due to his brother being a local mayor in Moldova. Ana and Pasha do not know what happened to their father after they were deported except that he was captured in Romania and sent to a gulag near Odessa. He died in prison of unknown causes. This photo was taken before the family was deported and the original image has been lost. It is interesting to think about the availability of images for this story and how much easier it is to preserve events and memory today, “The children nowadays are smarter, they remember everything. They are born with mobiles in their hands. We weren't so lucky.” -Pasha

Ana remembers the last night with their father, "One night, around midnight, our father, before fleeing to Romania, knocked on the window and gave us a box of sweets, saying to us, 'Your father is going away alone, I don’t know where, but you must listen to your mother because she is staying behind to raise you.'"

Ana shows me her right hand. She injured her hand when she fell on one of the few bowls of food her family could make during the manufactured Soviet-era famine of 1946, which struck her village before she, her sisters and her mother were deported to Kazakhstan. The deportations in Moldova are associated with state-produced famines that happened concurrently and were commonly used as propaganda to support the deportations.

"The bowl broke and I fell with my little hand right into the shards. A finger was almost cut off forever. Blood flowed badly and I, with my left hand, gathered the nettle (food) from the floor and we ate it, dust and all. My mother ran, and soaked a rag at the stove, hugged me and bound my little hand and finger, which was ready to fall off. I fell asleep for a little while in her arms, but the pain never left me that night nor for a few days and nights after." - Ana Graur-Munteanu

Ana and Pasha’s brother was forced to join the army at the time of their deportation, “Our brother had been taken in the army. It wasn't right, to take our brother in the army… and leave us behind. But no one cared…” - Pasha

Ana climbs through the village of Vadeni as she traces the steps of her childhood in the village before she was deported.

"The road back home was easier. From Kazakhstan to Floreşti we traveled in boxcars, and now with our naked eyes we could see the reality. We were going home and we were wondering, would we really return to the house we had, where would we find shelter? When we crossed the Nistru (the river that creates the western most border of Moldova), I was so excited that my eyes welled up with tears and stayed that way until we reached the village. Our pain was great when we learned that our house was now a primary school. Where were we going to go? Who will accommodate us? Mother met with the Soviet Committee president, Comrade Sochircă, who said: "Maruşcă, I thought that from where you were taken to you would not return, but you came back with children and all. The house is no longer yours, it belongs to the state”. Mother replied that God is great and He took care of us, helping us to return home. We stayed with our biggest sister, who took us all in. At school, we were received with understanding and compassion. Tears would fill our eyes as we were passing by our old house and watching as the village children played in the front yard. People who bought things from our house would not give them back. Only a woman, Anastasia Boj, came to mother and said; "Maruşca, I gave three rubles for your sofa. You have marriageable daughters, I will return the sofa to you." My mother wept and tearfully thanked her very much." - Ana Graur-Munteanu

Ana's daughter, Victoria, plays in the sea years after her mother returned to Moldova from Kazakhstan. She now lives in Italy with her husband and daughter.

Ana currently lives with her son Alex and his family and says that she wants to live to see her family safe and settled. During Alex's 48th birthday on August 23rd, she told me, "In my dreams my husband comes to me and says, 'Join me, Ana.' but I say no, I am happy here and I want to be with my family."

Over the Orthodox Christmas holiday, or ‘Old Christmas’ as it is sometimes called, the local priest will travel to each home in the village and bless the residents. Bunica Pasha cries and kisses the priest’s hand as he gives her a blessing. She gets very emotional when he visits, not only because she can realize her religious needs (which she cannot do socially due to her disability), but also because he is a relative of the family and she is happy to see her family.

When remembering Kazakhstan, Pasha remembers how both her culture and religion were taken away, “… It was very hard and you are among strangers, you don't know when to celebrate Easter or Christmas, you long for your home, your sweet country, your most beloved country.”

Ana and I practiced spelling in Cyrillic on the foggy kitchen window. When she and her sisters were deported to Kazakhstan they had to study in Russian. It is a common theme in deportees' stories that they learned and studied in Russian; many deportees have voiced feeling like their language was taken from them. Some older Moldovan speak Romanian while writing the language in the Cyrillic script.

“I would sit with my head beneath my desk. I couldn't understand a word. I was crying, crying and crying. I couldn't speak a word in Russian. Mother would soothe us in the evening, when she came home. She would say, ‘Stop crying now. You will learn. Today a word, tomorrow - two.’ We found ourselves taken so far away from our Moldova to such a big country, and we couldn't understand a word of Russian. Mother translated us as much as she could. But that's how it was. What could we do?” – Ana

Nina, a deportee born in Siberia after her mother was deported and her father imprisoned during the first wave of deportations in the early 1940’s, has a copy of her mother's bible in her home. I often hear stories of her father's bible as well, which traveled everywhere with him and was a source of solace.

“[My father] had his prayer book with him, even in the camp, and he had faith in Jesus Christ. That is what gave him strength.” – Nina

The Soviet Union worked hard to suppress religious practice, a fact that was hard for many Moldovans to handle. Moldova is still a highly religious country and Orthodox Catholicism can be seen in every facet of life today.

A photo of Nina and Ion's wedding day (21st of May 1977), is stored in the family bureau. Their godparents, Tamara and Gerasim Tamara (who was also a deportee, part of the Constantinide family), stand beside them.

“I got married to [Nina], a deportee as myself, in that, her parents were deportees, and we live peacefully now. We have two boys, they have their own children, our grandchildren, and we are retired. Now, we stay at home and rest!… I am happy with my life, except for the fact that we were oppressed. I lost a brother [in Siberia] and our parents suffered a lot. Imagine how it was to move with 5 children all the way to Siberia, where it is -40/-45 Celsius. How can you deal with such a situation? We managed somehow. I thank our parents,” - Ion

Ion Postica looks at photographs from the time of his deportation. He talks about how the deportations were a tragedy for his parents, but he was so young at the time that he still struggles to remember some parts.

“I was only a child [when we were deported], and the events didn't affect me much, don’t feel attached to them. But my parents, they were the ones who pulled the laboring oar… You know, we couldn't talk [about the deportations] with our parents, we didn't want to ask them anything and they didn't want to tell. I guess they were very afraid when they were taken away and they must have suffered a great deal. They were forced to keep their mouths shut lest someone in power should find something out about them. My father had a saying, ‘Don't play with the state, because you're playing with fire.’” - Ion

Ion Postica keeps a photo, taken in Siberia, of his family after they were deported. Ion’s brother, Andrei (pictured lower center), echoes Ion’s sentiment that their parents were the ones that bore the greatest burden of the deportations during their time in Siberia.

“I was little. I would play all day long. Our parents were the ones who endured [the hardship]… I didn't feel the burden of my parents' problems, they endured them all by themselves.” - Andrei

Ion's wife, Nina, who was also a deportee born in Siberia, holds up a photo of Ion and his siblings that was taken in Siberia at the time of his deportation. While Ion and his siblings successfully returned to Moldova, not all of his family was so lucky. Shortly before their return a younger brother of theirs died due to the extreme cold of Siberia and frailty of body that was a reality for all deportees at the time. Frequently, deportees talk about the small portions of bread and basic food they were given for their days’ work, as well as the small salaries. It was not uncommon for deportees to sell precious family heirlooms for a bucket of potatoes or the like.

Ion and Nina have hung a family tree made by their grandchildren on their refrigerator, which is held up, in part, by handmade gifts. Many deportees talk about how, despite the hardship they faced in the past, they are happy with their lives now, in part because they are so close to their families. Ion and Nina’s home is filled with their children, grandchildren, brothers, nieces and nephews everyday.

Ion and Nina regularly spend the afternoons with their grandson Danu. Both Ion and Nina make a point to educate their grandchildren about the history of the deportations in Moldova.

“My mother along with her two daughters were deported to the region of Chuman, district of Surgut [before I was born]. My father was sent to the concentration camp and sentenced to death on the charge that he was making anti-Soviet propaganda… Father was a police commissioner. He graduated from the Police Academy of Cernăuți and was then made a police commissioner and he did his duty, whatever need be back then. His duty was to protect people - to bring them justice, but they incriminated him for doing anti-Soviet propaganda, which was not true. So my Father spent 10 years in a concentration camp in the region of Sverdlovsk, In Russia, in the city of Ivdel, but he evaded [his original] death sentence. He evaded it because he could bake bread…” -Nina

Nina, who is a diabetic, takes her insulin shot every night at 10 pm. While Ion is very active around the house, Nina’s pain as a result of her illness keeps the pace of her life very slow. Her eyesight is also very bad, a fact that she laments, having been a voracious reader in her youth. Frequently as we are visiting with each other in the evening she will recite a poem by Mihai Eminescu, the most famous poet in Moldova.

Beats the moon upon my window
Down the same untroubled lane.
Only you are never passing,
Nevermore beyond my pane.

And the same prune trees in blossom
Reach their branches o'er the fence,
But the hours the past has taken
Never shall again come thence.

Other is your soul's intention,
Other eyes you have today,
Only I who am unchanging
Tread for ever that same way.

O, how slim and young and graceful,
Secretly with paces slow,
Would you come to me at evening
'Neath the hidden hawthorn's bough.

While my arms were clasped about you
It seemed we from the earth had sped;
And we talked great things together,
Though not a word had either said.

Kisses were our single answer,
Many queries, just one task,
While about the world beyond us
Neither had the time to ask.

Aye, little I knew in youth's enchantment
That it is alike absurd
Or to lean against a shadow,
Or believe a woman's word.

And the air still moves my curtain
As it used in times of yore...
Moonlight down the lane uncertain,
Only you come nevermore. - Mihai Eminescu

Nina puts a candle in the earth in front of her parent's gravesite for pastele blajinilor, a part of Easter in Moldova where families go to visit their relatives’ gravesites and give offerings and pray. Pictured above are her father, Nicolae, and her mother, Olga.

Nina remembers, “After Stalin died, my father was freed. He returned to Moldova and started looking for my mother. He sent a letter to Moscow, in the Soviet Union and asked where my mother was - where he could look for her so they could reunite as a family, but he had no luck… it took too long to get the legal forms. However, he found out where mother was from relatives and wrote to them asking if he could to go there. And so he went to my mother and found her where she was living. Thus, the family was reunited… [After my mother and father were reunited] another three children were born, (including Nina), but my father longed to return to Moldova and when mother and the rest of the family was allowed to go back… father got sick and died in Siberia… [When my parents were reunited,my father had] said to [my mother], ‘You'll remain by my side until my last breath. I'm so sorry that you have suffered so much because of me. I’m very, very sorry. And the children must have suffered too. I regret to put you through all this. You go

back home, to Moldova. You have no place [in Moldova] to go. You have no house… but you are strong. You'll survive and you'll take the children home.’ He wanted very badly that mother should return with us to Moldova - to bring us all back. Mother says that she granted his last wish to bring their children home.” - Nina

An archive photo of Nina's father shows that he was part of the Romanian army. I asked about his history before he had been arrested. Nina said he didn't talk about what happened, she only knows that he was a police commissioner charged with anti-Soviet propaganda – a charge the family believes to be untrue. It was dangerous for the family to talk about his life before the deportations, both in the home and in society. Nina doesn't know what was written on the back of the photograph.

Nina’s mother also kept silent about the family’s deportation, “… Until 1985, no one in the family would talk about [our deportation]. We wouldn't talk about it, not even mother would mention the deportations, or about living in Siberia. The story was over.” -Nina

Nina’s father, Elli, a former Stalinist era prisoner in the now infamous Gulag, was a victim of the Soviet era oppression that swept Moldova in the early to mid 1900’s. Originally condemned to death, his sentence was commuted due to his baking skills. After his release, he joined his exiled family in Siberia. Nina was born after he was reunited with his family.

“We were rehabilitated somewhere around 1990, our parents and us, who were born in the detention places of our parents. We were rehabilitated, but they still thought of us as the enemies of the people even though we did nothing wrong… As our father used to say, ‘I have nothing to regret… Everything I've done was legal according to the law. I've never broken the law. I’ve never broken anything. I've hurt no one. But how I suffered… For an injustice” - Nina

In the image above, Elli's last name, Tanasa, is written in cryllic script, as well as his year of birth, 1901.

In Moldova, the orthodox tradition has a holiday called Pastele Blajinilor. Nina and her family go to visit her brother and mother in her parents' home village of Nemteni on the border with Romania.

When remembering what happened to her and her family, Nina says, “May this never repeat… May future generations never go through such unjust events… For this for was an injustice… an injustice… May it never happen again…”

“So few of us remain… From those who were taken away… Who were so wrongfully taken away. They should give them justice!” - Nina