Ilmars Salts is the author of ""A Stolen Childhood; Five Winters in Siberia."" The eldest son of Aleksandrs and Olga Salts, well-to-do land owners in southern Latvia, Ilmars was only 10 years old when, during the first Russian invasion of Latvia in 1941, the ""Saltes"" ancestral home was confiscated and the family -- father, mother, grandmother and three children -- were loaded onto a cattle train bound for Siberia. The inhumane work conditions, lack of food, and freezing cold killed his parents and grandmother and the orphaned children returned to Latvia in 1946. They were taken in by...

Ilmars Salts is the author of ""A Stolen Childhood; Five Winters in Siberia."" The eldest son of Aleksandrs and Olga Salts, well-to-do land owners in southern Latvia, Ilmars was only 10 years old when, during the first Russian invasion of Latvia in 1941, the ""Saltes"" ancestral home was confiscated and the family -- father, mother, grandmother and three children -- were loaded onto a cattle train bound for Siberia. The inhumane work conditions, lack of food, and freezing cold killed his parents and grandmother and the orphaned children returned to Latvia in 1946. They were taken in by...