After the Soviet occupation of Lithuania, the family was exiled in the first wave of deportations that took place in June 1941.
Dalia, her mother, and her brother were first sent to the Altai region and then transported to Trofimovsk (Трофимовский пгт), a prison island in the Lena River delta far beyond the Arctic Circle.
[3] In 1949, together with her mother, she managed to escape and returned to Lithuania, hiding out in the homes of friends and relatives in Kaunas for a year.
In 1953, she was once again exiled to Yakutia but the following year, as conditions eased following the death of Stalin, she gained the right to study medicine at Omsk.
[1] Grinkevičiūtė died at the age of sixty in 1987, and is buried in the Eiguliai Cemetery in Kaunas.
The English translation, Shadows on the Tundra, by Delija Valiukenas was published by Peirene Press in 2018.