Jerzy Gromadzki’s dugout in Yakutia, 1960. Sybir Memorial Museum collection

Yakutia is a land in eastern Siberia, most of whose territory is covered by permafrost, with air temperatures dropping to -50 degrees Celsius. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it became a place of exile for, among others, the Decabrists, participants of the January uprising and labour movement activists. The Gromadzki family were also sent there, deported in June 1941 from the Szikszniai estate near Kibort in the Vilnius district of the Republic of Lithuania. His mother Helena Gromadzka (née Talko-Hryncewicz) and two children, Jerzy and Cecylia, were deported. The owner of the estate, Ludwik Gromadzki, remained at home. Jan Gromadzki, one of Ludwik’s three absent descendants, avoided deportation as well. The Gromadzki family ended up on the Lena River near the Laptev Sea, in the Arctic wilderness. In 1941, Jerzy Gromadzki’s mother and sister died. For most of his life, Jerzy worked as an electrician at the power plant in Kjusjur on the Lena River and as well as an electromechanic and radio operator at the kolkhoz ‘New Life’. He lived in the fishing village of Siktjach. In 1960 he formalised his relationship with Agrafena Ochotina, a local woman from the Ewenks people, with whom he had a daughter, Janina. He died in 1994. His daughter received rehabilitation certificate from Russian state and moved to Poland in 1997.