This book, “The Second Catastrophe”, contains stories of the tragedy of our people under Stalin’s regime. Most of them deal with Lithuanian Jewry. There are tales of life in exile and in the so-called “labour camps” where I too spent time.
These are based on personal experiences as well as those of war-time exiles who live today in Israel. My aim is to serve as testimony to the tragedy of European (i.e. Lithuanian) Jewry in the twentieth century.
This book is also intended to serve as a memorial to our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers – the victims and sufferers in the labour camps of North Russia and Siberia.
I hope too that my book will give a partial answer, at least, to the anti-Semites and the mysteries of the Stalinist regime.
It is not by chance that I feel it necessary to regard the condition of the Jews in the former U.S.S.R. as part and parcel of the Holocaust.
M.D. Hayat
