LTnews.net WORLD EXCLUSIVE

"HOW I BECAME A COMRADE: AN AMERICAN GROWING UP IN SIBERIAN EXILE" will be released by Meridia Publishers in the USA in April, 2013.

The book is a memoir of a young American-Lithuanian adapting & surviving in Siberian exile after deportation by Soviet occupiers of his family's homeland (Lithuania). The book will feature 100 original photographs, most from John's personal collection. One of those photos is exclusively posted below.

Here is an excpert:

I was afraid and cried all night, but no one paid attention. I learned people were afraid to console me, because my mother had been arrested. The next night, she didn’t return either. I was sad, but coming to the realization that there was no one around to take care of me. Mother kept some money in one of her shoes under the bed. I realized I could take the money and I had some free time, so I invited all my friends to join me in excursions through Irkutsk…

A more scary thought was that my mother was no longer around. For the next week I ate what canned goods we had left and wondered what would happen. I was alone.

When Mother was arrested she had asked the secret police commissar, if she could say “good-bye” to me. He had told her: “You’ve seen enough of your son.”

I was eleven and a half years old.