Early years

Armonas was born in a small village of Maskoliškiai [lt] near Pasvalys in northern Lithuania.^[1] She married a Lithuanian-American machinist, John Armonas, in 1929. They lived in Cleveland, Ohio, for six years; their daughter, Donna, was born in Ohio. They moved to Lithuania in the 1930s, and bought a farm in Suostas [lt]; their son John was born in Lithuania.^[2]

War years and after

In 1939, American citizens were warned to leave Lithuania; her husband and five-year-old daughter left, but she and her infant son did not have the paperwork ready to join them, so both stayed behind.^[3] She and her son were deported to Siberia in 1948, and she was tried as an American spy in 1951. While serving her prison sentence in a women's work camp, she was assigned to sew clothing in a factory, and do gardening at an exhibition camp. In 1955, she was allowed to return to Lithuania under an amnesty for political prisoners. She lived in a rented room in Pasvalys.^[4]

In late 1959,^[5] after meeting with David L. Lawrence, governor of Pennsylvania,^[6] and after years of pleas from John and Donna Armonas,^[4][7][8] Nikita Khrushchev agreed to allow the Armonas mother and son to leave the Soviet Union.^[9] They finally left in 1960.^[2][10] The family was reunited in Copenhagen after almost 22 years apart.^[11]

Later years

Armonas lived in Ohio with her husband and children after 1960.^[12] She completed a memoir with writer Algirdas L. Nasvytis, Leave Your Tears in Moscow (1961).^[13] "No one who reads it will fail to be moved by this courageous woman's account of her struggle for survival in a police state", said one American reviewer in 1965.^[14] Her book was translated into at least four other languages, and excerpts were published in Life magazine.^[15][16]

In her later years, Armonas was active in Lithuanian community activities in Cleveland. Her husband died shortly after they celebrated their fiftieth anniversary in 1979.^[17] After Lithuanian independence in 1991, she was able to visit family members in Lithuania. She died in 2008, three days before her 100th birthday, in Mentor, Ohio.^[2] Her memoir was published in a new edition in 2011, on its fiftieth anniversary, with additional photographs and material added by her son.^[18] Her son also published a memoir, How I Became a Comrade: An American Growing Up in Siberian Exile (2013).^[19]