The children of Siberia Foundation

The deportations of June 14, 1941 involved 15,425 residents of Latvia – Latvians, Jews, Russians, and Poles - and included more than 3,750 children under 16. During the process, men were split off from their families and sent to Gulag camps, where many fathers, sons, and brothers died of starvation and disease. Women and children were sent to special settlements, mostly in villages in the Krasnoyarsk and Tomsk districts. After the war, some were able to return to Latvia, while others remained forever in Siberia, having lost their homeland, language, and family.

For six years, The Children of Siberia Foundation has been collecting stories of deported children left to live in Siberia. A total of 740 interviews were taken in Latvia, Russia, Israel, and the USA.

• The stories of deported Jewish children were collected in the book Shalom Siberia, which was released in April 2020, in collaboration with the Uniting History Foundation and Liepaja Politically Repressed Club .