Władysława (Lottie) Tokarska is the sole survivor of the eight-person family deported to Siberia on the freezing night of February 10, 1940, from her home in Slonim near Grodno by the Soviets who invaded her homeland on September 17, 1939. Her father Joseph, mother Frances, and four siblings all died in the Soviet Union within two years of the deportation. Her older brother Theodore got lost in the Soviet Union and she never saw him again. Wladyslawa is the only member of the Tokarski family who survived banishment and escaped from the Soviet Union alive.
