Personal Statement by the photographer, Claudia HEINERMANN
“While I was working on my previous book ‘Wolfskinder A Post-War Story’ in Lithuania, people often mentioned the deportations to Siberia. I knew about the labour camps (Gulag) but I was not aware that during mass deportations whole families were sent to remote areas without any kind of conviction. The more I learned about this topic the more I was indignant by the many hidden stories about families who were torn apart that I decided to start this project. Especially the deportations to the arctic hit me the most. What evil brain sends women and children to the arctic to build up a fish industry? Where winter reigns ten months a year, where the temperature drops to fifty degrees below zero, without protective clothing and housing and only a piece of bread a day? It was obvious that many deportees would die, especially young children, but under Stalin a human life had no value. It didn’t matter how many people would die under horrific circumstances as long as they served the system. The deportation of innocent civilians to Siberia is a collective trauma in the Baltic states. Almost every family can tell about it from their own experience. As a documentary photographer it is my aim to contribute to keeping these historic memories alive.
Background information
‘Siberian Exiles Part 1- Lithuania’ by Claudia HEINERMANN, is the first part of a trilogy about the deportations from the Baltic States to Siberia under the Soviet regime.
Content / additional information (about the book design)
This book set, ‘Siberian Exiles Part 1- Lithuania’ by Claudia HEINERMANN, is a journey through history and has become a story about oppression, abuse of power and crimes against humanity. It is also a story about a people who refused to be broken and to give up their identity and culture. It is about the human will to survive and human resilience.
The drawings of Gintautas Martynaitis, a survivor of the deportations, the mostly unpublished archive images and the photos from the expedition of 1989 offer glimpses into the past, while I have endeavored to capture the present. I have listened to the eyewitness accounts of these events and visited the places where they took place. I have traveled through the Altai and Yakutia in search of traces of this remarkable chapter in history and I have recorded what encountered: the landscape of these remote areas, the villages, the culture, and the indigenous people with their still vivid memories of the time under Stalin. Dutch graphic designer Sybren ('SYB') KUIPER, with whom I previously made the prize-winning book 'Wolfskinder. A Post-War Story' designed the book box. The result is a monumental design of 818 pp. material divided over five separate books and an index and a separate book with the Lithuanian translation in a slipcase.” (© Claudia HEINERMANN)