“This love and affection within the family gave us strength through all our hardships, and we were able to endure and save our lives.

“I began writing not for myself, but so that others would know. So that no one could say it had not happened.

“I was neither a writer nor an educated woman. I was simply a mother who did not give up. And who survived in order to tell the story,

“I wrote with trembling hands, but with a courageous heart. Not for myself, but for all those lost in Siberia. Someone had to tell the truth,