The exhibition “A Light Room and a Dark Room” (Hele ruum ja tume ruum) looked at how children deported to Siberia acclimatised to life in Estonia upon their return. The fact that returning to Estonia after liberation was also a traumatic experience for those who were deported as young children, is one that is not often addressed – few had homes to return to, their educations were largely in Russian or had been cut short in Siberia. The return and acclimatisation with Soviet Estonia was complicated for the deportees, because they had very different memories of their homeland. Their dreams did not fit with reality and also, the deportees felt socially stigmatised in Estonia.
The central artwork of the exhibition was Marika Alver’s film “Return” (Tagasitulek) in which Tiiu Trisberg contemplates on how to maintain hope and dreams that help one persist and continue living in difficult situations.
Two trains left Haapsalu train station on 27 March 1949 with 1,876 people, of whom 910 were women and 614 children. The destinations were Barabinsk, Karasuk and Tatarsk in Novosibirsk Oblast.
Our programme included hanging a sign bearing the name “Tatarsk” on the former railway workers’ building in Jõgeva (now the Betti Alver Museum) and planting a Novosibirsk bird cherry tree next to the building.