Careerists: Quarry Duty in the Soviet Army

Ilmars Salts is the author of ""A Stolen Childhood; Five Winters in Siberia."" The eldest son of Aleksandrs and Olga Salts, well-to-do land owners in southern Latvia, Ilmars was only 10 years old when, during the first Russian invasion of Latvia in 1941, the ""Saltes"" ancestral home was confiscated and the family -- father, mother, grandmother and three children -- were loaded onto a cattle train bound for Siberia. The inhumane work conditions, lack of food, and freezing cold killed his parents and grandmother and the orphaned children returned to Latvia in 1946. They were taken in by their mother's cousins. Ilmars had only 5 and a half years to finish his studies and begin work when, at age 21, he was drafted by the Soviet army, where he found himself assigned to a battalion of Soviet ""stepchildren"" that had little to do with the military. The author, a retired electrical engineer, is a widower, and the father of two grown daughters. He regained ownership of his family's home in 1996 and built a cottage for himself at the seaside. He feels it is his obligation to his parents and progeny to share this unvarnished story of what it means to lose your freedom, in the hope others will learn from it.

(Gunna Dickson is a New York based writer and editor. Raised bilingual in the U.S., she has lived in Germany, France and Denmark, and traveled extensively. This is her third translation.)