It was the summer of 1999, and grandpa (Vilis Berzins) took me to the motocross championship in Latvia during school holidays. We were going there by train, and I enjoyed the trip; it was interesting, and we saw many bikes on the track. They were loud and fast. Amid all the activities and excitement, he told me about the book he had written, so I asked if I could see it. He said it wasn’t released yet because he was worried that the authorities would come after him and perhaps even kill him. Although Latvia was free from Soviet dictatorship for 8 years, he was convinced that Chekists would hunt him down. I asked what his book was about, and he said it was about how he was sent to Siberia by the Soviet regime back in 1949. I didn’t fully understand what all that meant, so that was the only time we spoke about the book. And so, a couple of years later, in 2002, he passed away. However, the manuscript survived through the years, and a few years back, in 2022, at a family gathering in Latvia, I remembered the book that my granddad had told me about. I asked my mum if she knew anything about it, and she said that the book was somewhere in the drawers. After pulling it out, we concluded that the world needs to know the truth about what happened back in 1949, in the so-called great Soviet Union, the first and incredible communist experiment, and so I began the process of getting the book published. It’s been a long road, but we are finally here, and I’m glad to publish it, for we will know how things went and what life was like for the countries and peoples that were taken over by the Soviet Union. It is interesting that after returning to Latvia in 1961, he soon began working at the Latvian Train Factory and built trains for the rest of his life until retirement. I would think that a person sent to exile by train would hate trains, but no, he made them. It is crazy to think that if he did not survive the war and the exile I wouldn’t be here and this book either, but he did survive and lived through it and left behind a daughter Iveta (my mum), then of course me Nauris (his only grandson), four amazing and beautiful granddaughters, Elina, Justine, Agija and Megija and four grand grandchildren a girl, Luize and three boys, Ian, Gusts and Matiss. It is a massive honour for me to publish my granddad’s book to the world and not let the truth be forgotten.