Vanaga, Melanija: - The chief subject of the book is, of course, its author Melanija Vanaga. Melanija was a Latvian born in 1905. She was 36 at the time the Communist occupying force arrested and deported her and her family. At that time, she was journalist, farmer and mother. Her husband, too, was a journalist.
The translator, Maruta Voitkus-Lukins, Melanija's junior by 34 years, could well have been on the same train that took the Vanags family to exile. Maruta's family, however, heeded the signs of foreboding during the time of the Molotov-Ribbentropp pact, and managed to insinuate themselves out of occupied Latvia just before the June 1941 deportations. Maruta received a thorough grounding in Latvian culture at a Displaced Persons' camp in Germany, sponsored by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Association. Her family subsequently immigrated to Canada. Equally at home in Latvian and in English, she felt called upon to translate and self-publish this documentary, in the same spirit that her school mate, Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga answered the call to become President of Latvia (1999-2007).