http://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2017/05/clary-estes-those-who-remain/
Hundreds of thousands of people from a corner of eastern Europe were forcibly deported as political exiles during two waves of Soviet repression in the 1940s. Many of them died during the journey or in exile. Others returned home with shattered lives. Only a few survive today.
"Those Who Remain" tells their stories. The Stalinist regime devised the deportation program to identify and exile political dissidents from what is now the Republic of Moldova. Those selected, often for reasons having nothing to do with politics, were killed or exiled with their families to remote regions of Kazakhstan and Siberia. Those who survived had to wait years to be liberated. If they managed to return home, they were systematically silenced and shamed by the Soviet and post-Soviet societies. Only recently, long after most of them died, have they been free to speak publicly about their ordeals.
"Those Who Remain" gives voice to these former deportees, and to their children and grandchildren. It bears witness to a profoundly important historical event that is little known by the rest of the world. These survivors have been waiting decades to tell their stories, which are shocking and harrowing, but also inspiring. See their faces. Listen to their voices. Some are still with us, those who remain.
