I lost an entire branch of the family to the gulag
What do you mean by that?
A surname in the family tree no longer exists because all the men of that line were sent to the gulag and didn’t return. Because they weren’t Russian or Jewish, or they were a threat, we were given no details about why they were arrested. An iron curtain country taken over by the Bolsheviks, my dad went over there once to try to get some info, couldn’t find anything, no living person existed with that surname. I’ve contacted people who live there and asked, and they were unable to find anyone either.
A surname in the family tree no longer exists because all the men of that line were sent to the gulag and didn’t return. Because they weren’t Russian or Jewish, or they were a threat, we were given no details about why they were arrested.
That is crazy.
It really is madness what humans are willing to do to each other once their minds are infected with the correct ideology.