Before you start to read my memoirs, I would like to explain the reason I decided to write them.
First of all, I think, a short introduction into the scope of my recollections might benefit both of us: you, as a reader and me, as a writer. You, in the sense, that you won"t need to read several pages before realizing that you are wasting your time; and me - because it gives me an opportunity to apologize for grammatical omissions and unconventionally structured sentences which you may encounter in my narrative: in no way I had an intention to introduce into English language stylistic innovations or novel expressions; they are just the consequence of my multilingual limitations (English is not my first language and I learned it quite late).
Now let me tell you how it all started.
A couple weeks ago, just before the Jewish Holiday of Rosh Hashanah, my daughter approached me with a strange question:
"Daddy, did you come to America illegally?"
"What? Of course not", I said, slightly surprised by her inquiry: "Why did you ask me? Never before you were interested in this part of my biography."
"Well", she said, "yesterday in the school we had a discussion in our sociology class about illegal immigrants and about the problems they are facing during their integration into American society, and everybody got very excited when I told them that my dad, most likely, also came to America from Russia illegally... "
"Wait a second. Who told you that? First of all, I didn"t come from Russia. I came from Lithuania. And second, definitely not illegally."
"Not illegally? How pitiful! And you just said - from Lithuania? I always thought you came from Russia. Is Lithuania a different country?"
"Right now - yes, it is. Right now Lithuania is an independent state but when I left, it was part of the Soviet Union together with other fourteen republics."
"What do you mean by "fourteen other republics"? What republics? What are you talking about? Do you mean that Russia consists of different republics just like we here, in USA, have different states?"
"Well, again, not exactly. Russia was just one of the fifteen republics. Together they formed Soviet Union. On one hand there were more differences between various Soviet republics than there are between states in the USA, but on another hand - less. Each one of them was controlled by the central government in Moscow. This government implanted trusted people into every sphere and institution of each of fifteen republics. Take, for example, the Soviet secret police KGB..."
"Oh, yeah, KGB! I have heard a lot about it. In the movies. Was this organization indeed as brutal as movies portray it? Did it put millions of the innocent people into concentration camps?"
"Look, it was a little bit more complicated than you see in the movies. I cannot explain everything in just two words. Besides there were different times also. Тhe reign of Stalin, for example, was quite different from the Brezhnev"s era. In the 1930-ties KGB agents (it was called NKVD then) indeed, under the cover of the night, were coming to arrest people, to deport them and often without any trial. But during my time KGB didn"t act that way."
"Very interesting. And how about you, dad? Did KGB ever arrest you or you were too young to be arrested"?
Her questions were falling on me one after another like snowflakes from the winter skies. Finally I had to give it up.
"Listen", I said to her, "why don"t you put all your questions on the paper? I will look through them and answer to the best of my ability.""
However, when two hours later she handed me several pages of the printed text, I realized that my task will be a little bit more complicated than I initially assumed. She was interested in everything starting from the conditions of my apartment in Lithuania to the holocaust, to the fate of the Jewish community in our city and especially she was fascinated by the KGB and its influence on our everyday" life. Basically - she was interested in everything."
"I discussed with my friends whatever you have told me this morning", she said, "And they got very disappointed that you were not an illegal immigrant. Nevertheless we worked out few questions for you and are anxious to hear your answers."
"How could I possibly answer so many questions?" I asked her, puzzled.
"This is not a problem. You could write your answers on a paper, just like I did" compassionately suggested to me my daughter, "and we, I and my friends, we can look at your notes later, at our convenience."
(She, as well as her peers, is constantly busy, either in school or on the cell phone).
The questions were placed not in a systematic order, chaotically, without any obvious link or correlation between them. Therefore the first thing I decided to do was to rearrange their sequence, to combine similar questions into specific groups, according to the subject, topic and time of reference and then to answer them, if possible, collectively.
It was during this process when I realized the underlying nature of the commenced enterprise: in all my answers the description of the Soviet reality could be presented only through the glasses of my own personal experience.
This discovery compelled me to look at the project from a different angle. If you think about it - I was a witness of a peculiar culture, a part of the unusual society which some other countries tried to duplicate but never succeeded and unlikely will ever do. It means that many details of this major social experiment of the twentieth century could be lost forever, particularly the ones which dealt with the human relations and interactions. At the same time, I presume, there are and certainly will be curious individuals, apart from my daughter and her friends, who may get interested in how people lived in the Soviet Union and what caused its sudden collapse and disintegration. While I don"t pretend to have a comprehensive answer to this tricky question, particularly since as a Jew I may have a somewhat skewed view on the subject, further aggravated by the fact that I lived in Lithuania and not in Russia, but nevertheless, my knowledge and insights may still help future history geeks to uncover the correct picture. I say this because I belong to a small group of individuals who not only shared the same kind of experience but who also have the means to communicate it to the representatives of a different cultural background without meddling of the unscrupulous censors, pressure from the editors and deficiencies of the translations, which, in my view, could be attributed to the lack of the familiarity with the translated material. My work thus might give a chance to an unfamiliar reader to look at the Soviet society through the eyes of one of the participants, instead of relying on some "secret archives", limited experience of the outsiders or on the fictional material, like Orwell"s book "Animal farm". In other words: by answering these kinds questions I can accomplish much more than just answering them.
From such theoretical observations to the idea of writing memoirs, as you can imagine, was just one little step.
"I think you have a very good point" agreed my wife when I shared with her my ambitious plan, "Such activity should be quite beneficial for your mental and overall health. Do it for sure. I agree. But first you need to finish the guest room in our basement, the one you started a couple years ago, rake leaves in our yard and finally clean up your wardrobe closet you have been promising me in the last three days."
So, I had to move into the basement, together with my laptop computer, to contemplate on the possible ways of accomplishing this challenging task.
Prior to this mission I had no clue how it might be difficult even to start this project; let alone to deal with many hidden obstacles and pitfalls during its development. Shall I begin my recollections from the day I was born? I guess that is what other people usually do when they write their biographies. But who am I to make anyone interested in my childhood or my adolescence? Am I a world celebrity? A football star?
No, this is not the right way to do it. I should find in my past an event or some incident which changed my life in some important or unexpected way and, at the same time, be related to the original objective: to provide comprehensive and truthful answers to the tricky questions of my daughter and her classmates.
While I was sitting in the basement staring at the blank display of the computer and considering how to start my notes and what my first sentence should look like, a tiny ray of autumn sun crawled through the dusty basement"s window, penetrated the tangled mosaic of the spiderweb and lay on my laps, soft and warm like a kitten. The arrival of this unexpected guest prompted me to look at our backyard, at the red and yellow leaves scampering over the withered lawn and the picture of another fall in another country suddenly emerged from the inner depths of my memory. Indeed, how many years have passed from the moment when we decided to leave the place we grew up and move to a strange land many thousand miles away?
Consequently, I remembered all other details of our voyage: our sojourners, the refugees who traveled together with us, young and old, cautious and brave, motivated and accidental; I remembered their fears and their hopes and the tears in the eyes of our relatives, the ones we were leaving behind, and the luring temptation of the universe that was waiting for us ahead. And, of course, I remembered my old and dear friends.
And then I thought - okay, but wouldn"t someone be interested to find out "why did we do it?" What triggered in our minds such a radical idea? Was life in the Soviet Union indeed so unbearable that we had no other choice but to leave? We were not fleeing a war or genocide as most of other refugees did.
I looked at the questions I promised to answer and to my sheer surprise I found among them very similar ones. And the decision of how, from which year, to start my memoirs came on its own, abruptly and effortlessly: all I needed to do is to provide a reliable description of those bygone days - the days of our discontent, awaiting and departure that we all, "Russian" immigrants, went through, and to tell the readers about the people I have met on my way to a free world and hope that my limited abilities as a narrator won"t unduly diminish their stories because their stories themselves are the answers to most of the questions.
So, after a short deliberation, I came to the conclusion that I will commence my notes from one specific day, the last day of the Indian summer, the day I and my friends for the first time came together to attend the service in Kaunas synagogue. Why? Well, first, because accidently, today is the anniversary of that day, if you count years according to the Hebrew calendar, and second... well, and second is because the season of autumn has a special meaning to Jews.
Mikhail Rothman
Yes, the season of autumn has a special meaning to Jews: it is the time of the Jewish holidays, time of joyful celebrations and remorseful prayers, spiritual meditations and exciting rituals, time of recollection, assessments, and divine judgment. In Lithuania it is also a rainy time: day after day and night after night the rain drums on the cobblestone streets and on the tin roofs of the old medieval buildings, forms impassable puddles and strips deciduous trees from their beautiful garments. It is cold and gloomy and inhospitable outside as if nature itself mourns over the departed summer setting everyone"s mood into the state of the muffled melancholy and nostalgia.
But within this stretch of the dismal weather there is a short period of time when the rain takes a break and the clouds move apart, revealing pristine blue skies and then a sun, in the gracious gesture of farewell, would ignite the soggy Baltic landscape in the magnificent colors of decaying foliage. In the evening of one of such summer-like days, at the advent of Yom Kippur - the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, in the tiny courtyard of the Kaunas choral synagogue a group of elderly Jews passionately debate the latest world news. The sun is almost gone; just its last slanted rays still continue to adorn the fallen leaves and the rusted fence, several naked trees along it, and the peeling walls of the formerly impressive but now slowly decaying edifice.
Built in the second half of the nineteenth century at the confluence of the two busy streets, Savanoryu and Ozeskenes, it stands as a sorrowful reminder of those old but not too distant days when the third of the city"s population spoke Yiddish and when this building was just one of many houses of prayer. Majority of the Jewish residents lived then on the opposite side of the Neris river, in the impoverished neighborhood by the name "Slobodka", the home of the famous "Slobodka yeshiva" and later, during Nazi occupation, the site of the Jewish ghetto. Nazis choose it not by accident: at the turn of the 20-th century it was swarmed with the poor Jewish folks - from the owners of the petty shops to their penniless customers, from skillful shoemakers to gifted musicians, from scholars and famous rabbis to their disciples and students. Only if someone could become rich enough to cross the river and settle in the more prestigious and predominantly gentile neighborhood, only then he or she had the opportunity to say a holiday prayer in a place like this.
The time has changed. Today, with only a handful of the Jewish residents and even fewer congregants this house of prayers can accommodate everyone, wishing to repent his or her sins on such a special occasion.
The sun is almost gone, but no one hurries inside. Among all the qualities possessed by the members of the Jewish community the notion of punctuality is an alien one, sort of the unnecessary intricacy which might complicate their already hectic lives. Who needs these additional obligations? After all, they have more than twenty-four hours to repent their sins: what difference could make few extra minutes? We, the youngsters, don"t want to be associated with this crowd of the eagerly gesturing folks - the last survivors of the vanishing Yiddish-speaking world. We are people of the new generation, more cultured and more educated, and therefore we are staying away from them on the autumn gilded pathway, which leads from the street to the entrance of the synagogue, encircling our mentor and teacher of Hebrew Mikhail Rothman. And although he may look just as old as those spirited folks in the courtyard, in reality, he is only few years older than we are and his misleading appearance is probably due to his thick, prematurely turning gray, beard or, perhaps, to the astute gaze in his eyes - the witnesses of the hardships that brought on him his Zionist activities: the expulsion from the prestigious Moscow university, lengthy detentions in police stations, psychiatric wards, charges of "petty hooliganism" ... At one point even his own parents officially disowned him. They both worked in public schools: the mother as a teacher and the farther as a principal. One day they were summoned to the local KGB office and the head of the "Jewish section" major Sidorhuck told them: "How could you inoculate your students to the notions of social justice and brotherhood if you couldn't educate your own son? How could you teach them to be patriots of our country if your own son is a disloyal Zionist and fascist?" And Mikhail"s parents agreed with him: indeed, it looked like a professional incompetence. They had to make a choice between their son and their job. And they choose the job. An orphan with still living parents is not a common phenomenon in our society. But who are we going to blame for that? Shall we blame major Sidorchuk? No, of course not. He did what he had to do, and he is not a bad man, after all. I know him quite well - he is one of our neighbors and lives across the street in the pompous building which was built several years ago for the KGB employees and their families. Nobody is supposed to know his position in that scary organization, but everyone does. Each time he meets my parents on the street he complains to them: "Do you know that your son got into a bad company? Are you aware that he attends illegal Hebrew language classes? You better take care of this now, before it might become too late and he will end like that disgusting bastard Rothman, his Hebrew teacher. Our labor camps have missed him, I can tell you. He and his buddies Zionists make too many problems for us. Not a single day passes without their mischief. I have a bad feeling that their actions will cause me to die prematurely from a heart attack. I can confess to you (since you are my neighbors) and tell that at this moment of my life I have only one dream, only one desire - it is to see all of you, Jews, boarding airplanes to fly from here into your cursed state of Israel." Unfortunately for major Sidorchuk his dream didn"t materialize, and he had died from a heart attack just several months before the start of the mass Jewish immigration to Israel. The locals, who knew everything, testified that his last words were: "Those bloody Jewish Zionists..." "Those bloody Jewish Zionists..." I don"t know about Mikhail"s friends but Mikhail himself became a devoted Zionist at the age of seven, when he visited apartment of his classmate Abram Frenkel and noticed on the kitchen table a colorful postcard depicting a tanned muscular man on the orange tractor and some kind of exotic tropical vegetation in the background. " What is this?" - He asked his friend pointing at the postcard. "This is a kibbutz in Israel"- Said Abram - "The postcard came from our relatives who live there." Kibbutz and Israel - these were two new words Mikhail never heard before. "Kibbutz" - explained to him Abram - "Is a collective farm just like our kolkhoz and Israel is a Jewish country." Jewish country? Mikhail never suspected Jews have their own country. As a matter of fact, a day or two earlier he was contemplating how it is unfair for the Jews not to have one. Indeed, he thought, Lithuanians have it, and Russians have it, and even Scots have the place they call Scotland, and only we, Jews, don"t have it. "Why?" - He had asked himself - "Why do we need to call a "home" someone else"s territory - a place where we are not welcome and constantly mistreated? Why can"t we have our own? Are we guilty of something and therefore don"t deserve it?" But here he came with the discovery: he was wrong - Jews have their own country; just not every Jew has the right to live in it. The rays of the fading sun have already left the rooftop of the synagogue and climbed up toward the heavens and colored a distant solitary cloud in different shades of pink and gray. The sharpness of the daylight has slowly melted into the chilly evening air. Just as a calm comes before the storm, so the skies turn pale and shallow before they fall into the darkness, before they could reveal to the world the first star; the star which would announce the start of the new day, the Day of Atonement, the fearsome Day of Judgment.
"It comes on the tenth day after Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah" - tells us Mikhail lighting up his next cigarette - "On that day God examines each person"s deeds and decides his or her fate for the future. In order to repent their sins Jews must pray all day long and fast. But after Yom Kippur we have a joyful holiday of Sukkoth. The last day of Sukkoth has a special name. It is called Simhas Toire. This is the only day of the Jewish calendar when women and men could pray together in one room." "Why do they have to pray separately on all other days?" asks Maya Katz. Maya Katz is the only girl in our group. Soon she will leave us and go upstairs to join other women in the upper gallery of the synagogue. "Having separate areas for men and women has nothing to do with the discrimination" - explains to her Mikhail - "The purpose of this tradition is to prevent males from looking at the women during time of prayers, so that women"s beauty and sexual appeal could not distract them from the holy matters." I am not convinced that this is the reason. At least regarding Maya Katz since her sexual appeal could hardly distract anybody from anything. She is one of the ugliest girls I have ever met. And an unlucky one too. I know for a fact that she joined our group not because of her interest in Hebrew language or in Jewish history but because she is crazy about our teacher Mikhail Rothman. Unfortunately for her, he already has a beautiful gentile wife, a stunning "shikse" by the name Laima, the object of our common envy and admiration. How could this swarthy and lopsided Jewish girl compete with the dazzling qualities of her rival? What might she offer in exchange? The only asset Maya has is her uncle living now in Israel because having such close relatives outside USSR is the necessary condition to obtain emigration permit, but it won"t be enough to lure Mikhail. After all, there are other Jewesses with the similar kind of assets. Actually Mikhail won"t need them anyway for in the years to come Soviet authorities, fed up with his mischievous activities of "petty hooliganism", will issue him the exit visa without the usual bureaucratic formalities and on one special day he finally will leave the country of his birth and will move to the country of his dream. In this new country, in Israel, he will be greeted like a hero, with the fanfare and accolade, and will spend the first few weeks meeting the Israeli president, celebrities and members of the Knesset. And then everybody will forget about him. Without proper education and practical skills, he won"t be able to find a decent job and will end up in his previous vocation as a cashier in some God forsaken little grocery store in the similarly forsaken little town of Afula. His beautiful Lithuanian wife, "the shikse" Laima, who so much admired him back in Lithuania, will leave him for an old and wealthy Moroccan Jew. But nothing will break his spirit; nothing will make him change his views. On the barren hills of Judean desert and on the dreary mounds of Samaria he will raise Israel flags and built primitive huts, claiming Jewish sovereignty over this ancient land in defiance to the "international law" and Israeli left-wing politicians, and harassing Israeli security service Shin Bet the way he previously harassed KGB.
А short historical journey.
I decided to include this brief narrative regarding Jewish impact on the history of Lithuania because without it the readers might have difficulty in understanding some of the actions and motives of the people I intend to mention in my notes.
Thus... let me start.
The first documented evidence of the Jewish presence on the Lithuanian soil is a decree issued by the Lithuanian king Vytautas the Great on June 24, 1388. It granted the Jews of the town of Trakai certain rights and privileges.
I will skip another 600 years of the mutual coexistence and refer anybody interested in this part of the history to the books and articles readily available in libraries or on the internet. Because, for all its richness and obvious importance to the history geeks this period of time had little impact on my life and on the life of my friends and relatives. I will notice only one peculiarity: for all this time Christians and Jews lived separately, apart from each other, with the minimal interaction between two communities. Their substantial intermingling started only at the beginning of the twentieth century.
I will begin, therefore, from the year 1918, when by the end of WWI Lithuania, after hundreds of years of the subservient existence, regained its full national independence. The rebirth didn"t happen peacefully: right from the beginning Lithuania got involved into a bloody war with Poland regarding its ancient capital, the city of Vilnius, designated by the leaders of the newly born nation to its previous role. However, six hundred years made a significant change in the demographic makeup of the city. By 1918 almost half of the population were Poles and at least one third - Jews. Ethnical Lithuanians represented just a tiny minority. The government of Poland considered the city to be a Polish property.
Poles won the war and incorporated the entire Vilnius district with its 100 thousand Jewish residents into their territory. Disheartened Lithuanians declared the second, by the size, city of Kaunas to be their "temporary" or "provisional" capital.
To compensate themselves for the loss of Vilnius Lithuanians in 1923 captured the major port on the Baltic sea, the city of Memel and renamed it Klaipeda. (Under the Treaty of Versailles Memel Territory was detached from Germany and made a protectorate of the Entente while French became provisional administrators of the region until a more permanent solution could be worked out.)
Until 1926 Lithuania was a democratic republic. But in December of that year the legitimate government was overthrown by the military coup. The leaders of the coup deposed president Grinius and replaced him with the chief of the Nationalist party Antanas Smetona, who later became the "president for life".
Despite the dictatorial essence of the new government, the living conditions for common folks in the years between two wars were quite good: the country experienced cultural renaissance and an unprecedented economic growth. Particularly it benefited local Jews, who after hundreds of years of depravity and persecution finally achieved equal status and became full-fledged citizens. Never before have they had such an opportunity to express themselves in different fields of social life. Yeshivas, synagogues, cultural and sport clubs, youth organizations, theaters, press and businesses - all of these began to flourish in the post WWI era. For example, although Jews comprised less than 10% of the population, they owned more than half of the country"s factories and small businesses, dominated in commerce and in a financial sphere, represented the majority among lawyers and doctors. The only doors which remained closed to them were the doors to the chambers of power: you wouldn"t find a single Jew among high-ranking military officers, among chiefs of police or Smetona"s close cronies. Apparently, due to such unfairness, many of the Lithuanian Jews still felt discriminated and disenfranchised. Quite likely that was the reason why such feelings led them to join the illegal, at that time, Lithuanian communist party.
There is a lot of controversy regarding Jewish participation in this clandestine organization. Majority of Lithuanians perceived it as, if not totally, then overwhelmingly, a "party of Jews". But this was not true. Communist party of Lithuania during the reign of Smetona never exceeded several hundred members, half of whom probably indeed were Jews. However three or even four hundred people out of a hundred and fifty thousand Jews were not more than just a drop of water in the sea.
The clear skies over Lithuania began to cloud in 1933 when Nazis gained power in Germany. They put a lot of pressure on the Lithuanian government demanding the return of the city of Memel. The intensity of this demand grew steadily over the years and in March of 1939 (just five days after the invasion in Czechoslovakia) Germany finally issued the ultimatum: "Give Memel to Germany or face full scale invasion". The signatories of the 1924 convention, which guaranteed protection of the status quo, France and Great Britain, followed their earlier established policy of appeasement and didn"t move a finger. On March 24, 1939 Memel became part of Germany.
In August of the same year Germany and Soviet Union signed an agreement, so called "Molotov - Ribbentrop pact". The pact had a "secret protocol" which assigned Lithuania to the Soviet "sphere of influence".
On September 1, 1939 Nazis attacked Poland and started WWII. Two weeks later Red Army also moved into Polish territory and occupied its most eastern provinces, including the district of Vilnius. In October USSR offered it to Lithuania. And Lithuanian government after long and heated deliberation accepted the offer.
However, there is nothing free in this world. Together with the city of Vilnius Lithuania also received Red Army units which stationed in the district after the invasion. In June of the following year these units moved deeper into Lithuanian territory and took control of the entire country. Lithuanian military didn"t offer any resistance while the president Smetona, fearing for his life, fled abroad, landing eventually on the American shores.
Beside elements of the Red Army Lithuania also acquired about one hundred thousand Jewish residents living in the Vilnius district and thus Jewish population of the republic grew approximately to two hundred and fifty thousand persons and represented now more than 10% of all citizens.
After taking full control of the country, Soviet bosses announced unscheduled national elections. Only communists and independent candidates were allowed to be chosen.
Despite of such severe restrictions many prominent Lithuanian personalities, such as former minister Venclova, writers Salomeya Neris and Cvirka, and many others were elected in a new parliament. (It was called "Liaudes Seimas"). A well known left leaning journalist Justas Paleckis became the new Lithuanian president.
On July 21, 1940 this newly elected Lithuanian government sent the petition to the Supreme Soviet asking for permission to join the "brotherhood of the Soviet nations". On August 3 such permission was magnanimously granted, and it marked the end of the Lithuanian independence.
Immediately after staged celebrations, Soviet secret police (NKVD) moved into the country and started to round up ex-capitalists, nationalists, former chiefs of police, "religious clerics" and other "enemies of the people". The chains of the wooden boxcars loaded with the elderly folks, children and disabled persons began to move east, toward uninhabited Siberian wilderness.
But in order to accomplish their task these NKVD investigators desperately needed help from the local collaborators because without the knowledge of the national specifics, language and recent history it was very difficult for them to uncover disguised adversaries. Soviet authorities didn"t care about a person"s ethnicity or religious background; they only cared about his willingness to support and promote the new regime. No wonder that under such circumstances a lot of Jews (although with the significant amount of the native Lithuanians as well) enthusiastically answered the call of their new masters. Every little shrimp, yearning for power during Smetona"s time, could now fulfill his or her dream. Perverts, sycophants, sadists and fervent revolutionaries, eager to repair the world, lined up in a queue to become number two in the local hierarchy of bosses. (number one usually was assigned to a someone from Russia)
Understandably, the gentile population saw only Jewish collaborators. The train of thoughts ran like this:
Only a few Lithuanians could work for such a disgusting organization as NKVD because you need to be a real scumbag to betray your own fatherland. And, obviously, there are only few real scumbags among the largely decent general population. However, for Jews the situation was different. Jews don"t have a fatherland; Lithuania is not their country. Therefore they don"t need to be scumbags to become Russian lackeys. Instead, they will be satisfied with a little bit of power, the quality they have been missing for the last two thousand years.
It didn"t make any difference that in reality less than half of NKVD operatives were actually Jewish. Relative to the general proportion of Jews to the rest of population as one to ten, such a situation nevertheless created an impression of the Jewish dominance in that infamous organization.
This circumstance was cleverly used by the Nazi propaganda: it molded in the minds of the local gentiles an image of the NKVD tormentor with a big Semitic nose and rapacious eyes. In short, for the vast majority of the ethnic Lithuanians the notions of the Bolshevik commissar, NKVD interrogator and a Jew soon became indistinguishable.
Meanwhile Lithuanian patriots did not sit idly. In the fall of 1940 the former Lithuanian ambassador in Germany Kazis Shkirpa (who refused to come back after Red Army occupied his country) with the help of the Nazi military intelligence "Abwehr" founded Lithuanian anti-communist organization called "The Front of the Lithuanian Activists". The purpose of that organization was to prepare the anti-Soviet revolt as soon as German army invades Soviet Union. Shikrpa was able to establish on the Lithuanian territory several secret cells and start preparation for the upcoming uprising. However, in May of 1941 NKVD operatives caught several of his messengers and during interrogations obtained the lists of the co-conspirators.
Therefore, at the beginning of June, NKVD began to carry out a new wave of mass arrests and deportations. It seized not just real plotters but also suspected, although sometimes innocent people. Usually these were the members of the families of those conspirators or their friends because NKVD considered everybody who had the knowledge about the plot but didn"t report it to the authorities as the enemy"s accomplices. According to the various estimates around forty thousand of Lithuanians were rounded up at that time and sent on the freight trains to Siberia.
These NKVD efforts, though, were only marginally successful. In less than 3 weeks German army attacked Soviet Union and all, remaining at large, members of the "Lithuanian front" staged the long-awaited revolt.
On the day of German invasion, June 22, 1941 the leadership of the Lithuanian uprising broadcasted on the radio the following statement (partial text):
"Lithuanian brothers and sisters, soon the hour we have been waiting for will come and Lithuanian nation will get back its national freedom and restore the independence of the state of Lithuania.
Today we rise for a battle against two-faced enemy. This enemy is the Red Army and Russian Bolshevism...
... The greatest and the most hidden supporter of our enemy is the Jew. He belongs to no nation, to no community. He has neither a homeland nor a country. He is eternally and exclusively a Jew, a servant to the Russian Bolsheviks. He and Russian communists are the one and the same enemy. The ejection Russian Bolshevik occupation and the slavery of Jewry is our holy duty and responsibility...
...Vytautas the Great granted Jews the right of refuge in Lithuania, believing they would not transgress the obligations of being polite guests. Jews, however, saw it as an opportunity to exploit - the bloodsucking tick of Israel insinuated itself into the body of the Lithuanian nation. Speedily they began to spread widely as hustlers, usurers, percentage-gougers, and builders of taverns...
...The evilest NKVD men, informants against Lithuanians and torturers of arrested Lithuanians were and are Jews...
...Jews are exploiters and insatiable bloodsucking parasites of Lithuanian workers, and farmers and urbanites.
The Lithuanian Activist Front in the name of the entire Lithuanian nation solemnly declares:
The ancient right of refuge provided to the Jews during the time of Vytautas the Great is completely and finally rescinded.
Every Jew of Lithuania without exception is hereby officially given notice to leave the land of Lithuania immediately.
Those Jews who have distinguished themselves through betrayal of the Lithuanian state or acts of persecution, torture and abuse of Lithuanian compatriots will be brought to account separately and punished accordingly. It is the duty of all good Lithuanians to take measures to arrest these Jews and, in grave cases, to mete out punishment..."
Thus the national rebellion of Lithuanian patriots very soon escalated into a wave of the anti-Semitic pogroms and distraction of the Jewish property, into unabated massacres, humiliations, tortures, and rapes. Hundreds of Jews were killed on the streets and in their homes, many were brought to the notorious seventh fort to face mass executions.
The pogroms started as early as June 25, first in Kaunas neighborhood of Slobodka, in towns of Plunge, Yurbarkas and Gardzai and then they spread to other places.
This first wave of violence had ended at the beginning of July. It was followed by a short period of calm during which all urban Jews were forced to move to the specially designated areas called ghetto. However, starting from the middle of July, the violence reemerged, this time in more organized and planned fashion. Jewish residents of the villages and small towns in which establishment of ghettos tended to be impractical, were summarily executed by the so called "police battalions" made up from the local volunteers and supervised by the German SS officers.
Later, in October, Nazi administration, apart from the already existing small execution sites established two major ones, first one near the city of Kaunas - Ninth Fort, and another near Vilnius in Ponary forest.
Overall, according to different estimates between ninety and ninety five percent of Jews (the highest percentage in the whole Europe) were killed in Lithuania during WWII, for the most part by their former neighbors.
At the end of the war most of these killers escaped into the West where they found safe heaven among the well-wishers, protected from the rightful punishment by the iron curtain of suspicion and ignorance.
Some of them (the smaller part) joined "forest brothers" - Lithuanian nationalist guerilla fighters who battled Soviet Union for the liberation of their homeland. Once again Soviet secret police (this time KGB) used tough and cruel measures to suppress the movement, once again trains with thousands of deportees began to move east, into uninhabited parts of Siberia. By the middle of the fifties KGB was finally able to quell the rebels but it couldn"t eradicate the free spirit and zealous desire of Lithuanian population to live in an independent and free state. The quiet resistance continued for many more years, sometimes exploding into a popular uprising as it happened in 1972 after Lithuanian student Romas Kalanta protesting Soviet occupation set himself on fire in the central square in Kaunas.
During all these developments Jews stayed, for the most part, neutral: it was not their business.
According to the 1970 census, just over twenty-three thousand Jews lived then on the territory of Lithuania among two and half million of gentiles: close to eighteen thousand of them lived in the city of Vilnius, between four and five thousand in the city of Kaunas and the rest in the other places.
Two thirds were local Jews, called Litvaks: they were mainly Holocaust survivors and their children and represented the entire spectrum of the society - from doctors to butcherers, from taxi drivers to artisans and craftsmen. At home they spoke Yiddish, celebrated Jewish holidays, kept up with the Jewish traditions and never felt ashamed of their Jewish identity. The sizable amount of Litvaks was also involved in the illegal, according to the Soviet laws, business activities.
The other one third were Russian Jews, those who moved to Lithuania after World War II. Contrary to the first group, they didn"t know Yiddish, lost all the links to Judaism and Jewish traditions and felt quite uncomfortable if someone reminded them of their ancestry. Their main connection to the "Yiddishkeit" was the fifth line in their internal passports (which stated person"s ethnicity) plus Jewish surnames and Semitic features of their faces which were difficult to hide. Many of them were coming from the mixed and intermarriage families while, at the same time, majority represented the most educated part of the general population. Naturally, they nurtured the same mindset among their children, utterly convinced that only preeminence in some, certain field of activity, can guarantee a Jew the rightful place under the sun. On another hand, due to their high position on the social ladder they often behaved quite snobbishly and pretentiously. You could hear from them left and right: "my son just received his PhD in physics", or "my daughter was just awarded the first prize in piano competition" and so on. It was inconceivable for these parents to have a child without a college degree.
I don"t know the reason for such profound dissimilarity between these two groups. It could come from the fact that Russian Jews lived much longer under communist rule or because of the difference in the attitude among ethnic Russians and Lithuanians toward their Jewish compatriots.
Well, there was among us also a third, very small, group of Jews, so called "hybrids", those, who had one of the parents coming from the Litvak side and another from "Russians". These Jews combined both traits: they valued good education as much as Russian Jews did and at the same time they kept Jewish traditions and customs as Litvaks.
Now, after the short introduction into the history of Lithuania lets return to my recollections of that wonderful autumn evening in the tiny courtyard of Kaunas synagogue.
Jewish amsateur theatre
Finally, the earth has sunk into the moonlighted abyss and the first star, lonely and dazzling, abruptly emerged from the dark depths of the universe. We are now walking toward the building and the sound of the rustling leaves adds a distinct charm to this special occasion. The day of a judgement, the day of the divine intervention has begun.
We are taking the seats in the rear of the building, behind those pious congregants who, unlike us, know how to pray in Hebrew; the "frume idn" as Mikhail calls them. They know the procedure by heart. They learned it when they were still small kids, before WWII. During that war Nazis murdered all our rabbis and Soviet authorities closed all our yeshivas and those Jews who survived the slaughter but nevertheless remained faithful to the religion of their ancestors must rely on the memory from their childhood for there is nobody who could guide them through the complicated maze of prayers and rituals. A short and lame man, by the name Chaim Tsypkin, approaches the wooden cabinet mounted on the eastern wall of the synagogue. He slowly opens it revealing to the audience an old scroll of Torah, the other miracle survivor from the unprecedented calamity. All the congregants get up from their seats to show their respect to the old yellowish parchment.
"Three thousand years ago" - Mikhail explains to us - "People didn"t have books and didn"t have paper and they had to write the words of Torah on the parchment like this. But not everybody could afford to own it in his or her house. And the dwellers of some village (or maybe it was a town) came with the great idea: they collected money from all the residents and bought one scroll for everybody. However, it was quite difficult for them to share it in privacy, and they decided to read it in public, aloud, so that everyone could hear the wise words of Torah simultaneously. But when could they do it? In those days people worked from morning till night and the only good time for reading was on the day of rest - either Saturday or holiday. They kept this scroll in the town"s meeting house or "Beit Knesset" as it is called in Hebrew or a synagogue, as it was translated later to Greek. That is how the practice of reading Torah in the house of prayers on Saturdays and holidays became a tradition." I don"t know if Mikhail has read this explanation somewhere or if he came to it by himself, but it sounds to me quite logical. Not everything he says is correct though, since he gained his knowledge from random books and centuries" old encyclopedias that he manages to find in the antique stores and in private collections and then he fills the missing parts with his own interpretations and guesses.
"Why Jewish Holidays always start in the evening?" - inquires him one of his disciples, a gloomy and unassuming guy by the name Sergey, - "And not the same as to all normal people at midnight?" Mikhail smiles condescendingly, showing us two rows of his rotten, crooked teeth. He knows all the answers to all the questions.
"I gave you the book of the Bible" - he reminds Sergey - "Do you remember the beginning of it?"
And seeing expression of confusion in Sergey"s eyes he recites the words he knows by heart:
"At the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was empty and dark, and the Divine Presence hovered upon it. And God said: "let be the light". And he saw that the light was good. And then he separated the light from the darkness and named it a day, while the cold darkness he named a night. And it was evening, and it was morning: the first day."
"What was then first? - he enquires Sergey in the same authoritative tone - "Night or day? It was evening... Right? That is why in our calendar each new day (not just a holiday) starts from the evening. Why "normal people" start it at midnight puzzles me too."
I notice the expression of pride and veneration in Sergey"s eyes. No wonder he is the best of Michael"s students.
"How pathetic this whole thing is" - remarks another member of our group, a toll and handsome guy in the black leather jacket, Todik Snyder, after he makes fastidious observation of the synagogue"s interior and people inside it - "one time I was in a Catholic church and everything there looked much more impressive and lavish."
I don"t understand why Todik (behind his back we call him simply Pimple) joined our company. He does not seem to belong here: he is a pompous and flamboyant guy, arrogant and self-centered, constantly craving for everybody"s attention and admiration. His main interests include body building, gambling card games and pretty girls and since he has a muscular body, could play a little bit on guitar and knows a number of trivial jokes he has a bountiful success among the representatives of the "weaker sex".
Although we are of the same age and lived our entire lives in the city of Kaunas, we didn"t meet each other for a very long time. Our first encounter took place only last year during the rehearsal practice of the chorus, a member of which I then was.
This chorus, by the way, represented a part of the, so called, Yiddish amateur theatre - a unique and bizarre institution among all Soviet organizations. Well, there was also another similar theatre in the neighboring city of Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, and we competed with each other - the pair of two black sheep in the sea of the otherwise homogeneous cultural establishment.
For the Lithuanian authorities it was the way to show Moscow comrades that they could act independently and not follow the directions of their mentors: see, you there, in Russia, are forbidding any development of the Jewish culture but we here, in Lithuania, are allowing it; we don"t obey your orders. Similar rebellions came also from Latvian and Moldavian communists, but they were less lucky. Or maybe they just didn"t have the same strength of will.
But going back to Todik, it was Nathan Frenkel, a younger brother of Mikhail"s friend Abram Frenkel and theatre"s long-time veteran, who brought him in.
"Would you like to join our dancing group? - He once asked Todik during their usual beer party in the students" dormitory, "We are in a big need for male dancers."
"Of course, not", answered half-drunken Todik, "Who, do you think I am - an idiot? I have other, much more important, things to do."
"What are those important things?" wondered Nathan, "Have you seen our girls, dude? They all are incredibly sexy ballerinas. In the moment you will see their legs, my friend, you will forget all other things. I can guarantee you."
The last argument worked very well and on the next day Todik came for the audition. The director of the dance troupe, Saevich-the-Elder, showed him a few simple movements and asked Todik to repeat them. And Todik did. Then Saevich showed him a few more steps and Todik repeated them as well. Then Saevich said to him:
"I am sure you will be a very good singer. Our chorus also needs talents. I will recommend you to the chorus manager Isaac Abramovich Zingerman."
That is how Todik got to the theatre"s chorus. The girls in the chorus were no match to the dancers and he was ready to leave it at once, but something held him in. That something was the music, the lovely Yiddish folk songs, these sad and jolly melodies that were born out of the anguish and faith of the suffering people.
Todik isn"t a thin-skinned or sensitive person, particularly toward old and unfashionable rhythms. And therefore, his unexpected interest in our cultural enterprise came to all of us as a total surprise. But on the other hand, we didn"t know then all the details and consequences of his life either.
Isaac Abramovich was playing on the piano when Todik walked into the room.
"Are you our new member?" He asked Todik without interrupting his play, "What is your first name, my friend?"
But Todik didn"t answer. Perhaps for the first time in his life he was stunned by a harmony of sounds for he suddenly recognized this long-forgotten melody: it was the song his late mother sung to him many years ago when he was still a small child. And he suddenly remembered all those happy old days: his cozy crib, his mom"s warm smile, and her low pleasant voice...
The play abruptly stopped; Isaac Abramovich took his hands off the piano and looked directly at Todik"s face. And we all, the members of the chorus, stared at him from the dark space behind our manager, all with the similar curiosity.
"What is the name of the song that you just played?" Todik asked Mr. Zingerman regaining his consciousness.
"It was "Rozinkes mit mandlen", raisins with almonds, the old Jewish lullaby", answered Isaac Abramovich, "Did you hear this melody before? Now sing after me: "Unter yingele videle shteit a klor vaise tsigale... "
"A baritone", he concluded upon hearing Todik"s muffled mumblings, "Take a seat on the right-hand side but not at the very end."
Our chorus was meeting twice a week, at evenings, after the regular work hours. During daytime, its participants had different types of activities. Isaac Abramovich Zingerman, for example, was a teacher of music in one of the city"s middle schools, Todik studied civil engineering and Maya was still a high school student. We all were different people with different temperaments, different attitudes, talents and goals. Nevertheless, at nights, when we gathered in the small room of the trade union building, we were becoming just like one unified body mystically bonded by the magical power of music. These meetings created in us the sense of the community, the sense of the common purpose and common destiny, a great feeling of being one big family.
The Yiddish theatre practiced in winter and performed during summer months. Since the Soviet authorities didn"t allow us to travel beyond Lithuanian borders, the theatre performed only in four places, one concert in each: in two cities - Kaunas and Vilnius and two resort towns - Palanga and Druskinikai.
The coastal town of Palanga located on the shore of the frigid and stormy Baltic Sea, was a real gem. It had wide sandy beaches, posh restaurants and many night clubs; it was elegant, stylish and noisy and very popular among those residents of Lithuania who could not afford the warmer and less rainy climate of the Crimean Peninsula in the south of Russia. Many vacationers there were either our friends, or our relatives, or our coworkers and therefore it wasn"t a big surprise for us to see during our concerts the animated and supportive crowd.
Druskininkai, on the other hand, was a different kind of settlement. It was a small sleepy town, almost a village, situated in the middle of the pine tree forest and famous for its therapeutic mud and mineral water "Birute". The contingent of vacationers there was also different: most of them were convalescents and families with the small kids and they were coming from the big cities outside Lithuania, from the places like Moscow, Minsk and Leningrad; coming to enjoy the fresh air, the magic power of the mineral water and the unfamiliar lifestyle: Druskininkai was offering them fewer red flags but more goodies in stores, neatly made spa facilities and polite service in public places and restaurants.
Well, the statement about the mineral water I may take back because this mysterious liquid had quite an unpleasant smell and even more unpleasant taste. And in order to add the insult to the injury it was warmed to the room temperature prior to the consumption. Nevertheless, people with the different types of stomach problems sipped it unwaveringly three times a day and all claimed miraculous cure. I bet they were misled by the oblivious notion that every product with an awful taste must be awfully healthy. Or otherwise - why would it exist on the earth in the first place?
The concert in Druskininkai fell on the last Sunday of July. It was the pinnacle of the vacation season and the town was swarmed with the loitering and dawdling vacationers. But even under such circumstances we didn"t expect to see such huge number of spectators which packed an unpretentious hall of the local trade union building: people stood by the doors and along the passages, at the stairs leading to the stage and even behind the windows - those unlucky ones who couldn"t get even a standing ticket.
Poor Russian Jews - for many years they were deprived from their religion and customs. They were the outcasts, an anomaly, an odd group of people without their own place on earth, without history, language and traditions, the "rootless cosmopolites" as they"ve been described by the official media and the "leeches on the healthy Slavic soul" - by the unofficial anti-Semites. The word "Jew" became a swear word: one of those words people use to curse each other. Even striving to be the first and the best didn"t help them very much. But here, in Druskininkai, on the last Sunday of July Russian Jews discovered something else about themselves, something that deserved their admiration rather than a shame; a pride rather than a pity, something they always had but were not aware of: they discovered their heritage.
After the concert, many enchanted spectators gathered outside the building to express to us their deep appreciation and gratitude. Several people openly wept unable to hold their emotions. Others asked millions of questions: about Jewish life in Lithuania, about Yiddish culture, political climate and the theatre itself: how it came into existence, when and what are the plans for the future and so on.
It was incredibly pleasant for us to realize that our hard work was not wasted, that it changed someone"s life in a more meaningful and affirmative way. We felt a great satisfaction, quite similar to the one that a doctor might feel toward recovering from a mortal disease patient.
One of the spectators, an old man, probably in his fifties or maybe even sixties, was especially thrilled. Unlike others, he spoke to us in perfect Yiddish:
"I am a deputy chief editor of the central magazine "Ogonyok" in Moscow", he said, "My name is Cesar Solodar. I came here specifically to see your concert. For many years I didn"t hear Yiddish language or listen to the Jewish songs. Someone in Moscow told me about the existence of your group but I didn"t believe him. Now I can see that I was wrong. It was such a great pleasure to hear and to speak once again my mother"s tongue. Why don"t you come to perform in our capital, in Moscow? You would have tremendous success there. I can guarantee you."
"As much as we are aware - the authorities in Moscow don"t allow us to perform outside Lithuania" - answered for all of us Isaac Abramovich.
"This is nonsense", the strange man disagreed with him, "Our communist party has a principle of promoting diversity among all ethnic groups. We, communists, are internationalists. Nobody has the right to discriminate against anybody in our country. I will take care of this. It will be changed - trust me. Please give me your address - I will let you know of the progress."
"Who is this awkward person?"- We were wondering on our trip back to Kaunas - "Is he a KGB provocateur or just a brainwashed lunatic who recently fell from the moon?"
But then the summer ended, and we began to prepare for the new theatrical season and forgot about the strange man and everything he had promised us on that evening.
It was already the middle of December when Isaac Abramovich came at our usual practice time with the big smile on his face.
"I have terrific news", he announced right from the door, "Do you remember the man we met this summer after our concert in Druskeninkai - the one from the "Ogonyok" magazine? Well, yesterday I received the letter from him. Apparently, he kept his word. He indeed spoke about us to some high-ranking officials in Moscow. Well, they didn"t agree yet to give us permission to perform in the other cities of the Soviet Union; they said such decisions should be coordinated with the local authorities. However, they came up with the better idea: they want to make a documentary movie about our theatre and the one in Vilnius and then show it on TV first central channel. Every person in the USSR will have a chance to see our performance, to hear lovely Yiddish songs and to watch our dances. Isn"t this great?"
His words, however, were met with the profound silence: far not everybody shared his excitement.
"It sounds quite fishy", replied somebody from the back of the room, "Since when did the communist party become so much interested in promoting Jewish culture?"
"Maybe they finally woke up...", started Isaac Abramovich.
But we didn"t let him finish the sentence. A commotion erupted after his first words and everybody began to shout and scream and not listen to each other. Among all of us only Todik seemed to be maintaining the composure, just occasionally throwing his short caustic remarks.
"Listen guys!" - shouted, trying to overcome the unrelenting clamor, usually unobtrusive and discreet Sergey - "They certainly will never show this movie on the central TV. It will be shown only for the western audience, to demonstrate how wonderful Jewish life in USSR is and to convince naïve people on the west that there is no discrimination of Jews in the Soviet Union: just look - we have an unambiguous evidence of the thriving Jewish culture in Kaunas..."
"Isn"t it true?" interrupted Todik, "Don"t we have a Jewish theatre in Kaunas?"
"Yes, but they don"t allow us to sing Hebrew songs", Maya joined the debate.
"It is because we are Yiddish theatre and not a Hebrew one...", parried Todik
"Guys, guys!", screamed Sergey in the unusual bout of avowal, "You are crazy, guys! This is not a time for the silly jokes. Don"t you understand that Soviet authorities want to use us as a tool for their disgusting propaganda tricks. They want to deceive people on the west and convince them that American Jews, who are fighting now for our right to emigrate, are simply liars and do not deserve to be trusted. No, no, we must refuse to participate in this propaganda show..."
"I afraid you cannot", raising his voice, Isaac Abramovich once again took the initiative, "the film crew has already left Moscow and it is on its way to Kaunas. It will be here either tomorrow or the day after tomorrow and they will start filming our reversals whether we want it or not."
As it happened just a few minutes earlier, his words were met with the deaf silence but then, again, just like before, the intense stillness broke off with the same vigorous uproar.
The general attitude was that in such a case we all should quit the theatre.
"No, you can"t do it; you will all regret", shouted in dismay Isaac Abramovich, "We put so much effort in establishing this theatre. We did it against all odds and predictions and only because so many people made so many sacrifices. Don"t destroy their dreams; don't destroy our theatre. Think about the consequences. You yourself enjoyed it. And do you remember how joyful were Russian Jews watching and listening to us in Druskininkai? I agree with you: not everything is okay in the Soviet Union; that is true. But our theatre is trying to make things better. We want Russian Jews to be proud of their traditions; we want them to know their own culture. You cannot be such callous people..."
He was a passionate fellow, this Isaac Abramovich, the director of our chorus, but he wasn"t right: we did care about Jews from Moscow and Leningrad and Minsk; we just had to weigh all the options and make a choice and it wasn"t on their side. Unfortunately for them. Well... On another hand, we didn"t know then that just several years later when thousands and thousands of the Russian Jews will immigrate to Israel they will embrace not Yiddish language and not Yiddish culture but everything Russian: Russian language and Russian traditions, embrace them as their own in a bizarre transformation from being Jews among Russians to becoming Russians among Jews.
As to the fate of the Yiddish Amateur Theatre - this event didn't mark its end either. The theatre ceased to exist but only temporarily. Later on it will be resurrected in Israel thanks to the efforts of many dedicated devotees such as Saevich -the-Elder, Isaac Abramovich and others and will be renamed "Anahnu Kan", which means "We Are Here". It will travel around the world to give performances in many places, in the cities of New-York, Toronto, Berlin and Tel-Aviv, everywhere with the consistent and immense success. However, you won"t be able to see Russian Jews among the audience, nor anyone will be crying after the concerts as it happened some time ago in the small Lithuanian town of Druskininkai.
"Not a big deal", would say then Mikhail, "Both, Yiddish and Russian, are the languages of our galut, the languages of oppression and homelessness. Our children will soon forget them just as the children of the Egyptian slaves, our ancestors, forgot the language of the country of their birth once they settled in the Holy Land more than three thousand years ago.
"
The claws of KGB
It is chilly and damp inside the synagogue as the congregation saves on the hefty heating bills. A stately cantor, wearing a worn-out "yarmulke" and tallit over his mink fur coat with the frayed sleeves, begins to chant the beautiful melody of Kol Nidre. But in the back, away from the pulpit, we can hardly hear his voice: the new arrivals, those who prefer to come under the cover of the night: the members of the communist party, directors of big corporations, agnostics and atheists make a lot of noise. They didn"t have a chance to discuss the world news earlier, before the service started, and therefore ought to do it during the time of prayers. But why would they listen to the cantor anyway? They are certain - their presence in the synagogue on such holy day is a mitzvah by itself. And a lot of a courage as well for there is no doubt that quite few of our co-congregants, who are now asking God to forgive them their sins and transgressions, will report tomorrow to major Sidorchuk the names of the participants of tonight"s service, trying not to miss anybody.
Yes, for sure there are KGB informers among the members of our congregation, and we are aware of them. We are looking for these snitches everywhere and all the time for we need to identify them well before they could become our friends, well before they could gain our trust and be promoted to our confidants because in the society, which is based on lies, eavesdropping gadgets and grotesque laws the friendship remains one of the very few traits that are still treasured and cherished as nothing else.
I аm glancing around and here they are - our wise and knowledgeable "melamed" "reb" Mikhail, uncommunicative and somber Sergey, then Pimple, Frenkel brothers... Only Maya is missing - she is now upstairs with the other women.
These are my acquaintances and friends, the dearest to me people, each one of them with his own mentality, disposition, attractive and annoying traits. We have been together for a long time. Together we shared a lot of anguishes and a lot of joys, together lamented our loses and celebrated our accomplishments, cried and laughed and therefore it is so difficult for me to comprehend how one of them could be a traitor, a disgusting informer, a snitch, who wants to stab me at the back, to destroy my life and my future. And here comes the question - who that loathsome person could be? How can I find him and what should I do to prevent him from materializing his malevolent intentions?
These are very disturbing thoughts. Very, very disturbing. They never bothered me before. Not until recently. To be precise - not until last Tuesday when I was unexpectedly summoned to the local KGB office.
On that day, early in the morning, a messenger knocked at the door to my apartment. He delivered me a writ.
"Tomorrow", he said, "precisely at nine o"clock, you must report yourself to the guard at the entrance to the main KGB office. You are not allowed to have an excuse. You also are not allowed to disclose the nature of my visit to anybody, even to your parents. Sign over here that you received the subpoena and understood my instructions. I cannot go back without your signature."
This sudden request and the way it had been delivered, swung my mood from the cheerful morning expectations to the state of intensive trepidation and anxiety. All day long I was trying to figure out what I recently did to raise the attention of that sinister organization. Is this an indication that major Sidorchuk"s silly threats are finally coming to a materialization? Could it be my participation in Hebrew classes? If yes, then why so suddenly? I was attending those classes now for more than a year. What else did I do lately?
And after giving some thoughts I concluded that it must be due to the letter which I signed several weeks ago.
This letter was an appeal of the Soviet Jews to the United Nations Human Rights committee and to the American Congress to help them to emigrate from the Soviet Union to Israel.
Mikhail brought it from Moscow in the middle of August and then, together with Sergey and Maya, he went through the apartments of the, known to us, local Jews soliciting them to sign the petition. He also asked me to help him, but I wisely refused, sitting as the reason, my upcoming exams to the school of engineering. Now I could see how prudent and wise my decision was. Although signing the letter was still a risky act (there was a possibility that I might be expelled from the university for life and never become an engineer) it was much less dangerous than to urge others to sign it. Indeed, the authorities could define such activities as an anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda and sentence the perpetrator to the lengthy term in prison.
This letter was not unique though. In those days, a number of similar letters circulated occasionally among Jews of the Soviet Union. In these letters anonymous authors expressed their deep attachment to the land of Israel, stated their desire to move to the birthplace of their ancestors and appealed to the international community and different human rights organizations for help.
Here is an example of one of such letters.
"If I will forget you, oh Jerusalem", it passionately proclaimed, "let my right hand forget its skill, let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set you above my highest joy!
For two thousand years our ancestors lived in exile. Homeless, deprived from the basic human rights, mistreated, and despised by their hosts, they moved from one place to another in a search for safety and fair treatment. At certain moments of time one or another compassionate nation was offering them a temporary refuge. But such lulls never lasted for too long. Envy, ignorance, intolerance to anything different and other human deficiencies always found the way to end this relative tranquility. And Jews once again were accused of causing natural disasters and spreading infectious diseases; of committing ritual murders and practicing cruel usury. And then one expulsion was followed by another; one massacre was followed by several more. Calamities and sufferings pursued our forefathers on their journey through the places and times. But every year, during the annual Passover Seder, they were turning into the direction of their ancient homeland, repeating these words again and again:
"The next year we will be in Jerusalem."
The miracle had happened: like a phoenix the nation was reborn from the ashes. We didn"t forget Jerusalem and she needs our hands. Once again, like two thousand years ago, we ourselves can preside over our destiny and don"t depend on someone"s good will.
It is the right of every human to choose for himself the place he wants to live. Please, help us to convince Soviet authorities to respect our rights."
That is how most of those letters sounded.
We didn"t know who wrote them. We knew some people who distributed them, we knew those, who passed them around and those, who decided to sign under such petition, clearly indicating his or her full name and address in order to eliminate any doubt in the authenticity of the signatures but, at the same time, inadvertently, helping KGB officials to uncover identities of the signatories.
Soviet bureaucrats saw these petitions and letters as a threat to their authority, as a slander on the "socialist way of living" and as a critique of their authoritarian rule. It was inconceivable for them why someone, in his clear mind, could prefer a "rotten capitalist society" over the, ruled by communist party, "workers" paradise"? They saw such petitions as an ultimate betrayal of their ideals.
During its covert journey each of these letters could be seized by the various KGB agents at any time and in any place and then everyone involved in this venture could face quite unpleasant consequences: from the expulsion from his or her workplace to losing his or her life. The most dangerous part in this clandestine operation fell on the shoulders of several dedicated Zionists from Moscow, on people like Vladimir Slepak and his wife Maria, on Yosef Begun, Ida Nudel, Nathan Sharansky and several others. These brave men and women took the task and responsibility of delivering the petitions to the foreign tourists, mostly American or British Jews, and, sometimes, to the diplomats from the Dutch embassy, which represented at that time Israeli interests in the USSR. Such activities in the Soviet Union were classified as acts of high treason and typically led to the extremely severe punishments. And indeed, many of those, mentioned above, Zionists spent countless years in putrid cells of Moscow prisons and in Siberian labor camps, and one of them, Nathan Sharansky, even received a death penalty.
As for American and British tourists - they also faced significant danger for they had to smuggle these letters out from the Soviet Union into the West.
No doubt that some curiously minded individual may rightfully ask: what was the purpose of their efforts? Why were there people in Russia, USA, Canada and Great Britain who choose to risk their lives, careers and future for the simple piece of paper? Was it, really, worth it?
Mikhail explained to us that the intention was to inform the world outside USSR, to tell it, that not only few disgusting renegades, as Moscow officials relentlessly claimed, but the entire Jewish community of Russia was eager to leave "people"s paradise" and exchange it for some other place on earth.
"We don"t have the power to fight this evil empire directly: it has secret police, an enormous army and a lot of prison wards", he said, "Besides, we are just a small minority among Soviet population and therefore the only weapon we have is to tell people the truth. With the help of American Jews, we may break that nasty iron wall, which surrounds us and settle on the land of our ancestors, in Israel."
Israel in those days was not just a point of destination. Like a beacon, like a lighthouse which, during the darkness of the night, directs desperate sailors to a safe harbor, it was guiding Russian Jews from the misery of their oppressive reality toward beautiful life without tyranny and discrimination.
Eventually the emotional appeal of the Soviet Jews triggered mass movements in the USA and in other countries in support for their plight and helped them to break the wall Mikhail so passionately was talking about.
These events, however, occurred much later, several years after I received, mentioned above, a subpoena to come to the city"s main KGB office. I had no clue then, no hint what to expect from this meeting or how my future might depend on it, and I was extremely anxious.
I remember the day of my visit to the KGB office very well, as if it happened just yesterday. It began in a bright sunny morning, cheerful and refreshing - the last spell of the departing summer. Although the smell of the approaching fall could already be felt in the air it was still quite vague and fragile. I was walking along the city"s main thoroughfare with the ironic name "Alley of Liberty" toward the gray ugly building at the end of it and contemplating how I am going to act during the upcoming interrogation.
My previous experience in dealing with this infamous organization was limited to the infrequent encounters with major Sidorchuk on the walkway between our houses. The present situation, however, was obviously different, more challenging and I had to consider various scenarios and to prepare myself for any surprising development. What questions they might ask me? Let"s say, they will ask me how my signature appeared on the letter? How? What should I answer? Well, I can tell them that I found the letter accidently on the table in the "Office for Visas and Emigration" on the day I came to apply for the permission to emigrate to Israel, and I don"t know who left it there and how it got there. I just signed it.
What else might they ask? Well, the number of possibilities was just enormous, and their likelihood drove me crazy. What shall I do? How shall I deal with it?
If Mikhail would be around, I would defy the promise I made to the KGB messenger and consult him on the strategy and guidance and possible consequences of the chosen path: Mikhail was an expert on such matters. Alas, he left the city a couple days ago and didn"t tell us when he is planning to come back.
Therefore, I had no other choice but to recall everything I read in articles and books about interrogations of the famous Russian revolutionaries and Soviet patriots during civil war and World War II and rely on the authors" truthfulness in revealing their stories. And the best strategy I could derive from their narratives was to keep my mouth shut, and no matter what, but don"t reveal anything that might cause trouble to my friends. Just pretend to be dumb and you cannot divulge any secret. The problem here was that in such case KGB could resort to more radical methods of interrogation, like a torture, and such perspective made me feel sick to my stomach.
I would be even more frightened if I would know in advance that our meeting was instigated not by my old neighbor, major Sidorchuk, but by the special KGB envoy from Moscow, who came here specifically to interrogate me. At least that was the tale lieutenant Belousov told me when he introduced himself at the checkpoint to the entrance of that cursed edifice.
After several formalities, like verifying my identity, he led me upstairs, to the fourth floor. I never been in this place before; I only heard rumors and scary stories and therefore the novelty and curiosity have pushed away my earlier fear. I was looking around myself trying to compare the picture I saw in front of me to the images I created in my imagination and quite soon I came to the conclusion that they didn"t seem to differ too much.
We climbed up by the spiral marble stairway and at every landing I noticed a metal mesh stretched between the links, blocking the gap in the middle. It looked as if someone put it on purpose to prevent people from committing suicide in case if somebody decides to jump down between the links.
"KGB doesn"t do such things without the reason", I was telling myself, "There were probably instances when the prisoners preferred to jump down to their imminent death rather than face the upcoming torture. It means they have been tortured here pretty badly."
The old anxiety came back. I caught myself thinking that I have no idea what might happen to me later today: will I be eventually released and go home to see my parents, or will I be sent directly to a prison without saying even one word to them? How does KGB deal with such stuff? Аrе they going to torture me? And if "yes" then how badly? I was imagining an excruciating pain, needles under my fingernails, slowly broken bones, electrical shocks.... Will I be able to withstand all this abuse and remain mute? Will I have enough courage to keep my mouth shut and don"t reveal my friends? To my great embarrassment I had to admit to myself that I wasn"t sure. I wasn"t sure if I could be strong enough to endure all this pain. And on the way up I was repeating to myself again and again: "you must be stubborn; you must be strong."
"We don't torture people here", explained to me lieutenant Belousov as soon as we took our seats across the dark brown table in the equally murky room. Behind lieutenant"s back was a small, grated window and in it I saw the well of the building"s courtyard, also dark and depressing just like the room we were seating in.
"These are just the myths perpetrated by the dishonest capitalist propaganda" he assured me authoritatively, noticing the expression on my face, "Such excessive methods were used a long time ago, during Stalin"s times. It is not the case anymore. Do not listen to the lies of the "Voice of America"."
Then he began to ask me some questions, very trivial ones, like the date of my birthday or the names of my classmates from the fifth grade, not to answer which would be quite silly. He wrote all my responses on the sheets of paper and I had to sign on the bottom of each one of them as to assure that what he wrote was indeed the truth. It took him more than one hour to get to the point.
"Two weeks ago, on September the third", he said slightly raising his voice, "you had in your possession a Xerox copy of the illegal Zionist literature: the book by the name "Exodus". Who gave it to you?"
His question caught me by surprise, I didn"t expect to hear it and looked at the lieutenant Belousov in amusement.
"Well, I can see by the expression on your face that you know what I am talking about," said my interrogator and smiled," so, who gave it to you?"
Who gave it to me? Pimple did. He gave it to me. I remembered the whole sequence of the events quite well.
It was the late evening, around nine o"clock or maybe even later. We - me, Sergey and Maya, were in the restaurant "Coffee and Ice cream," having a heated conversation with one of my classmates, Rimas (Rimantas). Rimas for some reason liked our company and often joined it to express his unconventional views which, in many cases, were diametrically opposite to ours. He was an ardent Lithuanian nationalist and fiercely defended the actions of his countrymen against all kinds of accusations, either they were right or wrong. Later, in the eighties, he became one of the founding members of the Lithuanian nationalist organization "Sajudis" which, against all odds, was able to drive Soviet Union out of their country and bring, once again, independence and freedom to his beloved homeland.
The subject of our debate this time was the role of Lithuania in WWII. We were trying to convince Rimas in Mikhail"s theory that Holocaust has started not in Germany, not somewhere else but right here, in Lithuania, due to the active participation of the local population in extermination of their Jewish neighbors. We choose Sergey to be our "spokesman."
"Look", he was saying to Rimas," at the beginning, when Nazis just came to power, their attitude toward Jews was not too ferocious: boycotts of the Jewish goods and financial institutions, dismissal of educators, intimidation, harassment... Their goal was to persuade Jews to leave the country and allow Germans to become a "pure Aryan nation". However, Nazi efforts were only marginally successful: Jews didn"t leave Germany at the rate Nazis hoped they would. There were several reasons for this. First of all, the other countries, hurt by their own economic problems, didn"t show any desire to accept the refugees who would become competitors in their already crowded job markets, and second, many German Jews remained loyal to their country despite their mistreatment."
"Typical Jewish attitude" remarked Rimas.
But Sergey, pretending he didn"t hear the caustic remark, continued:
"When the Nazis saw such dismal results of their efforts, they intensified their efforts and introduced in 1936 so called "Nuremberg laws", which stripped German Jews from their citizenship and imposed many other discriminating rules. These new measures were supposed to encourage Jews to leave Germany. By the spring of 1939 Nazis almost achieved their goal and very few "untermensch" remained in their country. But then it was "Anschluss", a unification of Germany and Austria, and more than two hundred thousand Austrian Jews instantly became the new tenants of the "Third Raich". Such a turn of events forced Nazis to change their means of persuasion..."
"Hold it", interrupted Rimas," You are wrong. Anschluss had happened in 1938, not in 1939."
"Oh, yes, you"re probably right", corrected himself Sergey after a few seconds of mental deliberation, "Yes, I guess it indeed happened in 1938. But the actual date doesn"t change much. The point is that from that time on Nazis started to use force to achieve their goal. First, they forcibly deported seventeen thousand Jews with Polish passports to Poland. Poland refused to accept these poor deportees and they got stacked between two countries for months. And then came "Kristallnacht" and ..."
"It means Nazis already begun to kill Jews at that time", interrupted Rimas
"It was only a spontaneous killing.", countered Sergey, "Not planned, not yet the Holocaust. Even when the Germans occupied Poland in 1939, they didn"t start to kill Jews immediately. Surely, they were shocked by the new reality: despite all their efforts for almost seven years, the number of Jews in the Third Reich didn"t decline but quite opposite - it increased and increased dramatically: they got another three million of the "untermensch". At this point Nazis realized they must do something dramatically different from what they did in the past if they indeed have any chance to achieve their goal. But what? First, they came with the idea of transferring Jews to the island of Madagascar in the Indian ocean, correct? You know this, don"t you? And you know that such a suggestion was quickly rejected on the ground of its total impracticality. Other similar ideas popped up, all of them from the same realm of fantasy."
"Didn"t they start to build Jewish ghettos at that time already?" asked Rimas sarcastically,
"Sure they did. And not just for the purpose of segregation. They did it to be prepared for any potential development, (still unsure what it might be). Nazis wanted to separate Jews from the rest of the population because this would make them easier to deal with Jews later. In any case they were still far away from committing mass murders"
"I agree with you", said Rimas, "Nazis at the beginning didn"t plan to kill Jews. They were not those irrational Jew-killers, as some pseudo-historians try to portray them. Nazis wanted to remove Jews only from the area they envisaged as an "Aryan living space" and had no intention to eliminate them from the face of the earth. Of course, they could "understand" other anti-Semites, like Palestinian leader Al-Husayni, but his goal and goals of other lunatics never became their priority. Basically, Nazis started to kill Jews only out of necessity, out of inability to get rid of them in any other way. I agree with you. But what Lithuanians had to do with it?"
"What? The massacres first started in Baltic states and in western Ukraine in June of 1941, after German invasion of the Soviet Union. And the perpetrators at the beginning were not the infamous Einsatzgruppen "death squads", as many historians mistakenly claim, but the local militia."
"Jews began to persecute Lithuanians first", snapped back Rimas, "Before the war. Soviet secret police NKVD was full of Jews. They deported thousands of local Lithuanians to Siberia. The actions of the people"s militia were in response to the actions of Soviet NKVD and not necessarily directed against Jews."
"You could be right. The first executions which began in the last days of June were indeed directed mainly against communists. And consequently at the Jewish members of the communist party. However these actions soon spread to the Jewish population in general and took a form of pogroms while the perpetrators were still local militiamen. Einsatzgruppen started to participate in mass executions only by the middle of July, if not later. Even more: at the beginning of July Nazi administration actually issued an order which, under the penalty of death, prohibited militiamen to kill Jews. In Lithuania, just like it happened previously in Poland, Jews were ordered to move to ghettos. And that directive was indeed implemented in the big cities which had a significant Jewish population and the pogroms there had stopped. But there were also many small towns with only a handful of Jewish residents. It looked impractical to create a ghetto for just a couple of dozens of people. Transporting them to the larger cities hundred kilometers away when German military desperately needed all means of transportation also didn"t look like a good option. And then someone suggested (I don"t know - who): why not just to kill them? The local population was quite enthusiastic and sympathetic to the violence of mobs during earlier pogroms. Why would it object to the killings now? Thus the first mass murders started in the small towns and villages across Lithuania. Only at that point Nazis realized: here it is - the long-sought solution to the "Jewish problem". And only then Einsatzgruppen came into action and extended the experience of the small towns to the entire territory."
"Don"t tell me that Lithuanians are the biggest anti-Semites in the world." started Rimas with the same degree of sarcasm but Maya interrupted him:
"Guys, look", she shouted, "Pimple is here! He wants to tell us something!"
In the far away corner of the restaurant Todik Sneider was frantically waving his hands, showing us all kinds of gestures, which supposedly meant: "hey, guys, cut off your conversation and come to me".
Prior to this moment I had no idea that he was even present in the restaurant. Usually he was entering it with a lot of pageantry, telling left and right funny jokes, patting shoulders, laughing, and trying immediately to become the center of the common attention and enjoyment. But tonight, for whatever reason, he sneaked in like a frightened mouse and quietly took place in the far away corner, near the kitchen. He sat there, probably, for a quite a while (I don"t know for how long) but after noticing the absence of the attention to his persona, he decided to reveal his presence in some other, more active way.
"What happened to him?" I asked Sergey and Maya, puzzled by the unusual behavior of our friend, "he acts very strangely today."
Sergey just shrugged; he also never saw Todik acting this way.
"Something serious probably", suggested, always concerned about everything and everybody, Maya.
"Look," I said to our Lithuanian opponent Rimas, "We are sorry, but we need to quit our discussion now. Let"s finish it some other time. Our friend is waiting for us".
Pimple indeed was waiting for us and waiting quite impatiently: he was in an unusual, agitated mood. We noticed how extremely anxious he was as soon as we approached his table. He nervously glanced at both sides, to assure himself that nobody spies on him, made a conspiratorial expression on his face and loudly whispered:
"Listen, guys. Say no one word, just follow me, I will show you something very-very interesting."
He led us to the furthest corner of the adjoining restaurant park and there, under the blurry light of the street lantern, he showed us a thick collection of the loose papers with the Xerox copied text: the pages looked awful - most of the letters were faded and pale, smudged with the ugly blots of black ink.
"What is this?" I asked Todik, puzzled by the secrecy in which he showed us this stuff.
"It is a book", he answered proudly.
"What kind of a book? Where did you get it?"
"It is a novel", he said, "A fiction. It is called "Exodus."
"Fiction? What fiction? What are you talking about? Who is the author?"