In Vilna lives a young Polish girl, so wealthy and carefree

Suddenly, away goes she and her family

Taken by force, pushed into a truck

Belongings stuffed into a trunk

A train awaits as they file in

The door closes and the light is dim

The young girl asks, "Where are we going?"

Her father replies, "Only the Russian soldiers are knowing."

Weeks fly by on the railroad

Ever so slowly the train goes

The prisoners alike arrive at a town

Once again pushed into trucks and carted around

The girl and her family arrive at a mining camp

The grandmother says repulsively, "We look like tramps."

"The land is so flat!" The girl remarks

"We're in Siberia...." The father says with a heavy heart

Silk clothes soiled and heads hung low

Into makeshift mud houses, the capitalists go

The landscape, nothing but brown and dried grass

The young girl thinks, "how long will this heat last?"

To the gardens, she goes

To **** the hundreds of shrunken potatoes

Her family is to work in the mine

On little bread and cheese, they dine

Finally relocated to a nearby village

Everyone so hungry, none dare to pillage

The girl goes to school and makes new friends

She wishes hopefully that learning won't end

Her family with their own mud house

Having not to worry about a single mouse

A letter arrives one day

To war, the father must be sent away

He takes the train to the front lines

Everyone says their goodbyes

Weeks later, the newspaper arrives

Heavy casualties reported, from those same front lines

They receive a letter from the father

"I'm alive." It reads, "About crying, don't bother."

Winter creeps in and nothing is left to keep warm

The girl steals coal and wood shavings thinking, "it couldn't do any harm"

Quickly the money goes by

The young girl takes up knitting on the fly

Her knitted sweaters earn them milk and potatoes

She spends less time with her friends, though

The little mud house too cold to bare

They find new people to live with, no warm clothes to wear

Years pass and the girl turns fifteen, not young anymore

Seven years they have spent in Siberia, living like the poor

Word arrives that the war is completed

From Siberia, the Germans had packed up and retreated

A letter comes, saying that the little family can go home

They take the train and upon arrival begin to roam

The streets are barren with nothing left

They find their house, not spared of theft

The father appears much older

The weather in Siberia was much colder

Than what Vilna, Poland was like

The girl takes her father's hand and family alike

The years of exile are done

The war is over, the Allies have won