“All at once, I felt the homeland as so very much mine, so close, so warm, so dear. Was it really necessary to be away for so long in order to truly understand how dear one’s homeland is? However,” — Melānija Vanaga Copy Share Image
“The train continued on its way to Rīga. I could not peel my eyes from the window. On some hillock, an old friend from long-gone days rushed towards me: the grey rock. A sight for sore eyes after stone-less Siberia.… — Melānija Vanaga Copy Share Image
“While waiting at the counter, in my mind I went through my relatives here in Rīga, who had not been touched either by the war, or the black storm of the new era, but my thoughts did not stop at any one as a close relative to whom I would want to go for a visit without misgivings, not even… — Melānija Vanaga Copy Share
“To here in Siberia, we were brought without tickets, stuffed into cattle cars like livestock. We were given water and at two-day intervals, warm food. We came here in convoys of one hundred cars in each, and the journey lasted three weeks. From the thirty people in my barred car, twelve remained in cemeteries in Siberia. On my return sixteen… — Melānija Vanaga Copy Share
“Slavery! It sounds archaic and perhaps even silly, and this word, too, people dared pronounce only in their hidden thoughts. “Slavery — it sounds menacing and perhaps not altogether true,” writes Ināra Egle on John’s day 1989 in Padomju Jaunatne in connection with the unrest in Uzbekhia. “But there is no other name for the empire-generated voiding of human rights,… — Melānija Vanaga Copy Share
“Home at last! After such a long absence. And again, I remembered that I no longer had a home. Now, when it was most… — Melānija Vanaga Copy Share Image
“All at once, I felt the homeland as so very much mine, so close, so warm, so dear. Was it really necessary to be… — Melānija Vanaga Copy Share Image
“The train continued on its way to Rīga. I could not peel my eyes from the window. On some hillock, an old friend from… — Melānija Vanaga Copy Share Image
