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yet despite his smile, the pain on his face made my eyes well with tears.
planted a seed of hatred in my heart. I swore it would grow to be a massive tree whose roots would strangle them all.
How could we stand up for ourselves if everyone cowered in fear and refused to speak?
Used to what, the feeling of uncontrolled anger? Or a sadness so deep, like your very core has been hollowed out and fed back to you from a dirty bucket?
empty promises,” she replied, “which is worse than an empty belly.”
such as nyet, which meant “no”; sveenya, which meant “pig”; and of course fasheest, “fascist.”
“A guilty conscience is not worth extra food,”
Sometimes there is such beauty in awkwardness.
“Good men are often more practical than pretty,” said Mother.
What would I have left if I gave them my self-respect?
his theory that pain, love, and despair were links in an endless chain.
“Even if it’s a sunny day but you see darkness and shadows. Paint it as you see it.”
“No. Don’t be scared. Don’t give them anything, Lina, not even your fear.”
“No, they hit me with a can of sardines,” I said. “Because you were crying?” she said. “No, just for fun,” I answered.
“But to Munch, that made the painting feel alive. He was a confused man. He didn’t care about proportion, he wanted it to feel real.”
“Munch is primarily a lyric poet in color. He feels colors, but does not see them. Instead, he sees sorrow, crying, and withering.” Sorrow, crying, and withering. I saw that in Ashes, too. I thought it was brilliant.
‘From my rotting body flowers shall grow, and I am in them and that is eternity.’ Isn’t that beautiful?” Papa smiled at me. “You’re beautiful because you see it that way.”
A wrongdoing doesn’t give us the right to do wrong. You know that.”
“It’s full of love. Nothing is more important.”
Surely, my survival is my punishment. That has to be it. This woman closes her eyes and she is gone. I’ve wished for death since the first day, and yet I survive. Can it really be so hard to die?”
Was it harder to die, or harder to be the one who survived? I was sixteen, an orphan in Siberia, but I knew. It was the one thing I never questioned. I wanted to live.
Success meant survival. Failure meant death. I wanted life. I wanted to survive.
Part of me felt guilty. Was it selfish that I wanted to live, even though my parents were gone? Was it selfish to have wants beyond my family being together?
Mother’s absence left a gaping hole, a mouth missing its front tooth. The eternal grayness in camp became a shade darker. Amidst the polar night, our only sun had slipped under a cloud.
“It means beautiful, but with strength,” he slurred. “Unique.”
It couldn’t end like this. It couldn’t. What was life asking of me? How could I respond when I didn’t know the question? “I love you,” I whispered to Jonas.
A tiny sliver of gold appeared between shades of gray on the horizon. I stared at the amber band of sunlight, smiling. The sun had returned.
Dear Friend, The writings and drawings you hold in your hands were buried in the year 1954, after returning from Siberia with my brother, where we were imprisoned for twelve years. There are many thousands of us, nearly all dead. Those alive cannot speak. Though we committed no offense, we are viewed as criminals. Even now, speaking of the terrors we have experienced would result in our death. So we put our trust in you, the person who discovers this capsule of memories sometime in the future. We trust you with truth, for contained herein is exactly that—the truth. My husband, Andrius, says
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Brave souls, who feared the truth might be lost forever, buried journals and drawings on Baltic soil, risking death if their capsules were discovered by the KGB.
It is estimated that Josef Stalin killed more than twenty million people during his reign of terror.
Their freedom is precious, and they are learning to live within it.
They chose hope over hate and showed the world that even through the darkest night, there is light.
Loves
These three tiny nations have taught us that love is the most powerful army. Whether love of friend, love of country, love of God, or even love of enemy—love reveals to us the truly miraculous nature of the human spirit.
Michael Green, who was brave enough to pull the jar from the earth and finally bring this story to the world.
dream big and love even bigger.
Survivors learned to keep painful secrets and lived in fear for decades.
I learned that those who show kindness in an atmosphere of cruelty are truly courageous. I also learned that I have so much to be thankful for every day.
I tell people that I wrote the book, but it’s not my story. The story belongs to the people of the Baltics and those who endured Stalin’s terror.
But all of the survivors had one thing in common, and that was love. They survived through love. Whether it was love of country, love for one another, or love of God, they chose to focus on that love, and it kept many people alive.
Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia may be small countries, but they’ve taught the world large lessons about love and freedom through peaceful endurance and silence instead of violence.
