Marin Buga had just turned 11 on July 5th, 1949, when a round-up of families began in his village of Mereni in the Moldovan countryside. His name was not on the authorities’s list – but his grandfather’s was. At the last minute, local enforcers added Buga’s parents, along with their children who were aged 15 to six months, to the list to ensure their property was included in the public farm that was being created under Joseph Stalin’s policy of forced collectivisation. Three generations of his family were packed into wagons and transported more than 5,500 kilometres away to the...