A pilgrimage to the homeland, to a family's beginnings, involves a complex range of emotions. These feelings are even more complicated, in this instance, by our people's brutal deportation, a half-century ago, from their beloved centuries-old villages. The tiny villages are now primarily populated by citizens of another nationality. Much that was here has been destroyed--but not the feeling, the history or the heart.

The villages are well away from any kind of tourist destination. There are no castles, stately homes, theaters or art museums to lure the interested traveler. There are just the foothills, the forests, a church, tilting headstones, a few houses and grassy ruins. Yet somehow, there is far, far more.

Through this website, we invite you to join others who have found their way to the heart of their heritage--looking for vestiges of what had been--and perhaps still will be. External, material aspects of a culture might fade--but not the heart. Not if we refuse to let it die, not if we keep the history and the memories alive.