Miriam Tasini and her sister, Alisa Sorkin, were toddlers in 1940 when they were loaded onto cattle cars bound for a gulag in Siberia, just two of the one million Polish citizens, including 200,000 Jews, deported by the Soviets to labor camps.
Their parents were allowed to take only what they could carry, including gold coins sewed under the buttons of their daughters’ winter coats, which were later traded for food.
