On the 19.06.1941 the Communists deported from the khutor (solitary farm) of NAYRAY, district of BASHKAY (today PASWALIS), Lithuania, 2 kms away from the Latvian border, the Latvian family MIKAYNIS (farmers):
At night they were burgled. The family was not allowed to take with them more than 200 kg of luggage. And then they were taken away to the railway station in BIRZHAY.
In these days the elder daughter, Yelena Vilyusovna MIKAYNITE, born in 1923, was just on the point of passing the final exams at the grammar school. She and her family were forced into a goods waggon with two-storey plank beds, in which were stuffed about 50 –60 people in all. It was said that their prisoner transport was already the fifth from BIRZHAY (since the 14th of July).
There was not enough space on the plank-beds for all of them; some of the deportees lay on the floor. The train passed through Smolensk and Rzhov, and was bombarded on the way. It was only when they had reached the Ural mountains that they were allowed for the first time to get out of the waggon, not far from some small river, where they were permitted to wash themselves.
During a train stop, somewhere in Siberia, the head of the prisoner transport and his guards entered the waggon: ”Those, who want their husbands to stay with the family, must give me money”. He,in fact, accepted money and also did not say no, when he was offered gold.
It had been foreordained by fate that the Latvian family MORKUNAS (farmers) got into the same waggon as the MIKAYNIS’:
The deportees had to get off the train in KRASNOYARSK. After a few days the MIKAYNIS’, the MORKUNAS’, the VEYSBERGIS’, the KIGYALIS’, the SCHULZ(AS)’ and the VAYTEKUNAS’ were transported away to the south on trucks, to the NOVOSYO-LOVO district; they were let out in the village of TRIFONOVO, on the left banks of the river Yenissey, opposite the village of KOMA (nowadays Trifonovo is flooded). Apart from the above-named some other families, which had been deported from Lithuania got to the village of TRIFONOVO, too.
The exiles were sent to work for a kolkhoz called “Red Ploughman” In the village the MIKAYNIS’ were given a free house with a kitchen garden. After a certain time they were even able to buy themselves a cow It seemed as if life had somehow sorted itself out.
The MORKUNAS’, VEYSBERGIS’, KIGYALIS’, SCHULZ(AS)’ and VAYTEKUNAS’ remained in exile in TRIFONOVO until 1958. The VEYSBERGIS’, MORKUNAS’ and KIGYALIS’ went away after their release, however (in accordance with the information given by the Research Center of Reprisals in Lithuania) they did not go back to Lithuania, but to Latvia.
The SCHULZ(AS) family did not return home; they stayed to live in the Novosyolovo district.
The fate of Vilyus MIKAYNIS and his family looked different. Around the 04.07.1942 they were sent to NOVOSYOLOVO, the district town, were they were forced to get on board the steamship “Josef Stalin”. There was no time to sell the cow; they had to leave her behind in Novosyolovo, tied to a post.
The deportees were carried away to the district of TURUKHANSK and had to disembark near the settlement of CHORNOOSTROVSK, on the right banks of the river and had to disem-bark near the settlement of CHORNOOSTROVSK, on the right banks of the river Yenissey.
There was a little village, inhabited by a few locals. To this place they deported about 30 families: Germans, Finns, Latvians, and later – Greeks, as well.
The exiles lived in barracks and had to catch fish under the supervision of the local brigade leader. Once a month the commander of the special commandant’s office, Tikhon LUKYANOV, came to visit the settlement. Later, after he had retired, he was killed by his own son, who hit him a bottle over the head. When the former exiles learned about this, the merely said: “Man is wolf to man”.
Apart from Vilyus MIKAYNIS’ family (he himself died from a stomach ulcer in 1943: there was neither a doctor, nor any medicine) only one single family from Lithuania came to the village of CHORNOOSTROVSK. They were Lithuanians – the wife and sons of a civil servant from BIRZHAY, who had also been deported in the June of 1941:
In CHERNOOSTROVSK there also lived an exiled Finnish family – mother and son.
Among the exiled Germans was Maria KEMPF, born ~1923, with her mother and sister; David HASENKAMPF, born ~1890, with his wife and his sons David and Ivan/Johann.
In CHORNOOSTROVSK there was a Latvian family, deportees from LATVIA – a mother with her two daughters:
(After their release they returned to their home country).
As from 1947 M. (F.) MIKAYNENE and her children lived in exile in the village of BAKLANIKHA, 20 km away from CHORNOOSTROVSK, also situated on the right banks of the river Yenissey. Only on the 15.06.1958 they were exempted from registration and periodic checks at the commandant’s office.
The KIREYLIS, AGABA and BUMBULIS families were also transferred to BAKLANIKHA late in the 1940s, and all exiles were withdrawn from CHORNOOSTROVSK: a military unit settled there.
During the exile Ayna MIKAYNITE married R. (Y.) KIREYLIS. After their release they stayed in the north, as well, and lived in Turukhansk, where Ayna Vilyusowna still lives today. Y. (S.) KIREYLENE and her two sons returned home in the 1960s.
Erika MIKAYNITE married the exiled Greek Grigoriy Dmirtiyevich GEORGIADI, born in 1927. Having been released from exile, she and her husband went to Kazakhstan; they also took her mother with them.
Yelena MIKAYNITE married a local. She lived in Turukhansk and worked in the district hospital; in 1993, however, she moved with her daughter to Krasnoyarsk.
V. (V.) MIKAYNIS stayed in Turukhansk till the end of his life.
01.09.1993, recorded by VB.S. Birger, Krasnoyarsk, “Memorial” Society