Primary Sources

I spent the afternoon in a KGB prison.  Our tour guide's (the University insists) narration of the experience was as straightforward as if she were a real estate agent. And here in the execution chamber they signed a fake document, were shot in the head upon completion, and bashed with an axe to make sure they were dead.  And here was the best security system in Eastern Europe. And these cells were restored when it became a museum, because after Stalin died, the organization became gentler, and they no longer used the aqua-torture cells where prisoners stood naked on a small platform in a pool of water until they shared information.  And you can see here that the wall has been painted 17 times to prevent prisoners from sharing messages. And this cell is nicely padded so that after interrogation, the detainees dosed with LSD and other hallucinogens couldn't kill themselves, and their screams wouldn't disturb the others.  

Sometimes, history is very difficult to swallow.

Sandy Price, Dr. David Barclay, Mrs. Hayes, Susan Poetzel, Mc-Graw Hill, you have all failed me.  Everyone knows that the allied powers of WWII fought against the Axis of Evil. Hitler=bad and the enemy of my enemy is my friend.  The Lithuanian partisan movement, or "underground" army, existed for 10 years, under the belief that the mighty US would sweep in and save Lithuania from the aggressions of Russia.  They held on to the statutes in the "Atlantic Charter" agreed upon by Roosevelt and Churchill, that stated: 1. Territorial adjustments must be in accord with the wishes of the peoples concerned and 2. All peoples have a right to self-determination.

As she shuffled us out of the display on the partisan movement, I believe our guide's words were, "well, we have no oil in Lithuania, so moving on." Of course, history exists only in perspective, and every narrator has his own tale.  But, I know this.  Franklin Delano Roosevelt is no hero of mine.  We hid behind our "isolationist" policy. We entered the war only after the Japanese attacked us.  We ignored the Holocaust at its worst, and we let Russia take hundreds of thousands of lives and exile halves of nations to Siberia. Granted, we realized our mistakes eventually, bring on the Cold War, but it is my understanding that had much more to do with Communism vs. Capitalism and fear than in did with humanity.  

I do not understand power.  I do not understand control.  I do not understand genocide.  I do not understand ignorance.  I do not understand violence.

I do understand courage.

The partisans knew that face to face combat against Russia was a pointless death sentence. Instead, they cleverly organized themselves into districts, lived up to their name in bunkers dug under barns and forest floor, and sought to disrupt the Russian organization in any way possible.  They ambushed operations, sabotaged trains to Siberia, assassinated officials, and published and distributed an underground newspaper. Among these men and women was my grandmother's brother, Jonas.  He became the leader of the group (code name "Salkunas", falcon) in his region, Marijampole.  He was killed for his resistance on January 6, 1948. The rest of the family was in Siberia.

The other family member never to set foot in Siberia was my grandmother, but for a different reason.  I have been searching for the truth in my grandparents' story for as long as I have understood the existence of the Soviet occupation.  Our cousin, Nijole, told this story at dinner the other night.  I listened as hard as my ears would work. I didn't hear it.

I understand a lot of this language.  I get it when a shop keeper tells me how much I owe her.  I can order food and actually know what's in it.  I even called up a Lithuanian yesterday to arrange a ride to camp on Friday.  I do not possess the skills to understand the story I have been searching for most of my adult life and despite my pleading for one of my 3 American relatives sitting around the same table to translate, I still do not know how it is that my grandparents escaped from Lithuania and landed in the United States.  

I have these pieces.  

I thought that my grandfather was a member of the partisan army.  This is not true.  He was actually captured by the German army during their occupation of Lithuania (in between the 2 Russian occupations during WWII) and forced to dig bunkers for them. The story gets fuzzy. By war logic then, he was actually "liberated" by the Russian army.  At some point he was being dragged to Prague by the Russian army and my grandmother was following him.  She pretended to be French at some point, rode into Prague on a Russian tank, and tricked them into thinking they had liberated her from the Germans?!?  This may be language, or my lack of historical knowledge, and brings to mind the failure of Dr. David Barclay.  I elected to take a University course from him entitled, World War II.  We talked a lot about Japan.  I fell asleep in class often and got the only B- of my college career.  Dr. Barclay, WWII, I give you an F-.  

And somehow my grandparents ended up "safe" in Germany.  They re-met by chance at a church along the way that was popular among Lithuanian refugees.  At some point, they got married. My Uncle Pete was born in Germany and my uncle Tom boasts that he was created there.  My father, like me, was made in the USA.

Understandably caught up in her own quest for answers, and sensing my frustration, my American cousin Vakare reassured me that she would write the whole story down.  This is a tertiary source.  My Lithuanian cousins confessed that their English isn't good enough to make sense of the details and complications.  My grandparents are dead.  My father knows no more of the story than I.  His father refused to talk about Lietuva.  My primary sources live locked behind language and so I remain with half answers.

I spent the afternoon in a KGB prison.  Maybe half answers are enough.