Holocaust

The Four Epochs of Professor Irena Veisaitė: Images, Portraits, Words and Theater

Cultural historian Aurimas Švedas’s book “Irena Veisaitė. Gyvenimas turėtų būti skaidrus” [Irena Veisaitė. Life Should Be Transparent] will be launched at the Vilnius Picture Gallery at 6:00 P.M. on December 15. Historian Saulius Sužiedėlis says the book contains unforgettable images of 20th century Lithuanian history, including the Jewish and Lithuanian interwar period in Kaunas, the ruthless reality of the war and the Holocaust, rescue and rebirth.

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Author Švedas, the subject of the book Irena Veisaitė herself, theater producer Audra Žukaitytė, director Gintaras Varnas and literary scholar Kęstutis Nastopka are to attend the book launch, to be moderated by Vytenė Muschick. The book details the extraordinary life of the German literature specialist, drama expert and long-time director of Lithuania’s Open Society Fund.

Poet, translator and student of culture Tomas Venclova said of the book: “This book belonging in the genre of long conversational is a prerequisite for everyone who is interested in Lithuanian history over recent decades. Irena Veisaitė is one of the most enlightened people of our land, the incarnation of tolerance and common sense. She devotes the most attention to culture, especially the theater, and the cultural opposition in the Soviet period, but very wisely, avoiding extremism and empty words, also lays out painful philosophical questions.”

Full story in Lithuanian here.

Condolences

Word has reached the Lithuanian Jewish Community Dov Levin passed away December 3. Levin was born in Kaunas January 27, 1925. He joined the partisans and left Lithuania on foot for Jerusalem on January 17, 1945. He is the author of numerous groundbreaking works about the Holocaust in Lithuania and about Litvak culture. Our deepest condolences to his family and loved ones on the death of a man who meant so much to so many.

The Secret’s Out: Bagel Shop Featured on Russian Travel Site

Evgenii Golomolzin

Travel journalist and photographer Evgenii Golomolzin from St. Petersburg, Russia, has written a long piece about the culinary experiences available in Vilnius, with the Bagel Shop featured prominently.

Vilnius is a cosmopolitan city where all sorts of ethnic dishes are on offer, he writes. As a heavily Jewish city of many centuries, it has preserved Jewish traditions even after the Holocaust. There is an old Jewish quarter. A year ago the Bagel Shop Café appeared as well. The kosher café the Bagel Shop is an exotic attraction. The Bagel Shop is located at Pylimo street no. 4. The café is not large and is very simple, but original. It feels like a small apartment with the books and knickknacks on the shelves. You can read the books as you sip coffee, you can buy a Hebrew dictionary or a Jewish calendar. But people come here not for the books, but for the real Jewish treats and the bagels (€0.85 apiece). Five kinds are sold at the café.

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The display case also has lekakh, a Jewish sweet-cake; imberlakh, a pastry made of carrots, ginger and orange; and teiglakh, small cakes cooked in honey. You can order something more filling, for example, soup with dumplings (€2.00), an egg-salad sandwich (€3.60), tuna sandwich (€3.60) or hummus sandwich (€3.60). It’s all delicious. The café opened just recently—in 2016—but has already become a tourist attraction, the St. Petersburg-based travel publication writes.

Full story in Russian with very nice photographs here.

Holocaust Survivor: It Had Nothing to Do with War, a Madman Committed the Violence

Finally a book has been published telling the story of how Moriz Scheyer successfully hid from the Nazis. The decades have not lessened the hatred he feels for those who aided the fuhrer.

Scheyer was the art director of one of the main newspapers in Vienna. He knew many of the city’s artists at the time and was an important figure in journalism covering literature in his own right. When the Nazis came to power, he had to quit his job and home. Hiding in France in 1943, he began writing what eventually became the book “Asylum: A Survivor’s Flight from Nazi-Occupied Vienna through Wartime France.”

The Holocaust was carried out without the civilized world having the courage to say it should stop, or even expressing its disgust. Only later, much later, when it was much too late, we began to receive nice expressions of solidarity in the context of general war propaganda. And at that time, when that was being done, the states which had all the power and could have done so without greater expenses, were unable to do their duty to open the door to the persecuted.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

New Book by Lithuanian Writer about State of Israel

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Accomplished author, lecturer and media personality Giedrius Drukteinis has a new book out called “Izraelis – žydų valstybė” [Israel: The Jewish State] and as with his comprehensive treatment of the United States-Viet Nam war, it’s a long one, 832 pages. It was published by Sofoklis publishing house in Vilnius in 2016.

Drukteinis goes through the main events in Jewish history in chronological order, from exile to Babylon, the Middle Ages, modern emancipation, roots of anti-Semitism, aliyah, Zionism, relations with Arabs, the Jewish experience during both world wars, the foundation of the state and modern development in the current period. The chronological layout is intended to help Lithuanian readers orient themselves to the creation and history of the Jewish state, according to the publisher.

The book devotes much space to the concept of aliyah leading up to the founding of the unique State of Israel. One reviewer said most of the book is about warfare.

The Kaunas of Chiune Sugihara as Casablanca del Norte

lrytas.lt

Japan is a market of 125 million tourists. Kaunas is attractive as a destination for them because of the memory of Righteous Gentile Chiune Sugihara. Much has been done, but much more needs to be done, including presenting Kaunas as a kind of Casablanca of the North. Šiauliai University lecturer and historian Dr. Simonas Strelcovas recently returned from the land of the rising sun. There he researched Japanese attitudes towards Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul who issues thousands of visas to Jews in Kaunas in 1940, thus saving them. In Japan he is greatly honored. The historian says this respect should be exploited to attract tourists. Dr. Strelcovas is certain the nature of Lithuania then when the rescuer operated needs to be told. That Lithuania was not Nazi, and that, unlike other European states, accepted tens of thousands of refugees. He’s planning to reveal all this in an academic book in Japanese to be published next year.

Full story in Lithuanian here.
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Four Musical Views on a Jewish Theme

remejai

You are invited to attend the launch of the compact disc called Four Musical Views on a Jewish Theme at the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius at 6:00 P.M. on December 12. The compact disc is a project by the Lithuanian Union of Musicians, Muzikos Barai magazine and the Goodwill Foundation. Participants are to include composer and president of the Lithuanian Union of Musicians Audronė Žigaitytė-Nekrošienė, pianist and music professor Leonidas Melnikas, violinist Borisas Traubas and cellist Valentinas Kaplūnas.

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The Four Musical Views on a Jewish Theme CD is a unique musical excursion into the tragic 20th-century history of the Jews. Never before had anti-Semitism and hatred of Jews reached such proportions, never before had epiphanies of evil been accompanied by such violence and suffering. Artists were unable to remain silent and their work testifies to, and sometimes screams about these shameful pages of history, condemning evil and exalting good. Four great 20th-century musicians– Maurice Ravel, Darius Milhaud, Aaron Copland and Dmitri Shostakovich—have immortalized this in their work. The tragic passages of Jewish history retold by these artistic geniuses are performed by Lithuanian artists on the compact disc, including singer Liora Grodnikaitė, violinist Boris Traub, cellist Valentinas Kaplūnas and pianist Leonid Melnik. It is an appeal to every individual and to everyone.

Muzikos Barai magazine has made this disc available to readers as a free gift. In their October issue they published an article about those who rescued Jews from the Holocaust in Lithuania.

Mark Harold: Arguments, Counter-Arguments and Facts on Škirpa Alley

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by Mark Harold, Vilnius City Council member
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Let us begin with my argument, which is very simple and against which my opponents have counter-arguments. One short paragraph:

Kazys Škirpa led the LAF. Current competent institutions of the Republic of Lithuania recognize the LAF was an anti-Semitic organization. Therefore, naming a street after the leader of this sort of organization in Vilnius, where the Holocaust was especially brutal, within the European Union in 2016 is inappropriate. Now more laconically I will analyze each attempt to argue against this, which I have encountered over recent days, and will explain why these counter-arguments are invalid.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

New Book about Sugihara by Lithuanian in Japanese

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Next year a new book about Chiune Sugihara, Japanese consul in Lithuania and rescuer of thousands of Jews, is scheduled to be published in Japan. The author is Dr. Simonas Strelcovas, historian and professor at Šiauliai University in Lithuania who researched the hero at Japanese archives and only recently returned home. The book is to appear in Japanese.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

Lithuania and Israel: Past, Present, Future

Lietuvos ambasados Izraelio Valstybėje bei Lietuvos URM surengta konferencija „Lietuva ir Izraelis: Praeitis, Dabartis, Ateitis“

The Lithuanian embassy to Israel and the Lithuanian Foreign Minister held a conference called Lithuania and Israel: Past, Present, Future at the Peres Peace Center in Tel Aviv on November 24, 2016. The conference discussed Lithuanian Holocaust studies, progress in commemorating victims, current activities of the Lithuanian Jewish Community and Lithuanian citizenship restoration issues.

Lithuanian ambassador to Israel Edminas Bagdonas spoke about increasing partnership between the two countries in his opening speech. He noted Litvaks in both countries are making great contributions to this. Lithuanian ambassador-at-large Dainius Junevičius emphasized the change in attitude towards the country’s history by the public and especially young people. Ronaldas Račinskas, executive director of Lithuania’s International Commission to Assess the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania, spoke about progress in Lithuanian Holocaust research and commemoration. Vytautas Magnus University lecturer Robert van Voren presented his studies into the Holocaust in Lithuania and spoke about parallels between Lithuania and the Netherlands. Yad Vashem representative Dr. Arkadi Zeltser addressed the state of monuments for commemorating Holocaust victims in Lithuania. Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky provided an overview of the current situation and activities of the community. She also field a large number of questions from the audience about the Litvak legacy and heritage in Lithuania.

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US Embassy Reps Visit Kaunas

Kaune viešėjo Amerikos ambasados Lietuvoje atstovai

Two weeks ago representatives from the United States embassy in Vilnius visited Kaunas. They toured the Seventh Fort and met at the Sugihara House museum with Sugihara Foundation founders Ramūnas Garbaravičius and Egidijus Aleksandravičius, Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas and reporter Birutė Garbaravičienė. Ted Janis of the American embassy expressed satisfaction the Kaunas and Lithuanian Jewish Communities, the Kaunas municipality, the Seventh Fort collective and Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Amir Maimon had combined forces to commemorate the Holocaust victims of the Seventh Fort at the mass grave site. They also spoke about the situation regarding Holocaust education in Lithuania, the importance of the Sugihara museum and Jewish life in Kaunas.

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Cyclopedia on Holocaust in Žemaitija Published

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Aleksandras Vitkus, Chaim Bargman. Holokaustas Žemaitijoje. – Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijos institutas, 2016. – 488 p.

The book’s authors go into fine detail in their descriptions of the mass murders in Žemaitija (the historical Samogitia, western Lithuania), having collected testimonies from witnesses several years ago. Žemaitija is composed of 6 districts plus the Klaipėda region (historical Memel). They collected information about Kretinga (12 rural districts), Mažeikiai (8 rural districts), Raseiniai (12 rural districts), Tauragė (13 rural districts), Telšiai (9 rural districts) apskritis, the western section of the Šiauliai district (10 rural districts) and the Klaipėda region. The cyclopedia includes about 70 locations where mass murders took place and monuments now stand.

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Full story here.
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Barbed Wire at Synagogue

We’ve received some angry emails about the barbed wire which has appeared on the synagogue fence. The main point seems to be that it’s not aesthetic. Of course it’s not. And it doesn’t fit in with our unique synagogue built in 1903 with its architectural authenticity.

Many students and teachers from Vilnius and Lithuania visit our synagogue. Tourists also visit. This year more than 5,000 guests visited the synagogue.

The Lithuanian Jewish Community celebrates all the traditional Jewish holidays at the synagogue. Our guests also celebrate with us, including foreign ambassadors and members of the Lithuanian Government and members of parliament. We are working actively with public organizations in the European Union which are involved in insuring the security of Jewish communities around the world. The security system at the Vilnius Choral Synagogue was set up based on their recommendations and continues to be improved. In Europe armed professional security service personnel guard synagogues.

Because of security concerns, we are asking everyone to adhere to rules for visitors at the Choral Synagogue, which are posted in three languages on the LJC website, lzb.lt, and will be posted at the synagogue in a visible location.

Concerning the barbed wire, we thought about it deeply, and of course we don’t like it, but we decided the most important consideration is safety. For that reason this quick and inexpensive temporary solution was adopted. At the same time, plans for a new fence are being drafted, one that doesn’t clash with integrity of the architectural style but does meet security requirements. The project will be a prolonged process, because we must ask permission from and harmonize the project with the Cultural Heritage Department to remove the old fence and build a new one. We hope to complete it next summer. We are in charge of the synagogue and we are concerned for the safety of worshipers and guests, and we don’t want events to repeat here in Vilnius which have occurred elsewhere. Here are some examples.

In Copenhagen a killer attempted to gain access to a Jewish event with about 80 participants, mainly children. No one knows what would have happened if not for the man who sacrificed his own life to stop the killer.

Over one week last July there were eight attacks on synagogues in Paris. In the Paris suburb of Sarcelles, a crowd of 400 watched as one synagogue was fire-bombed.

During the attacks in Paris a kosher food market was heavily damaged and looted, as was a pharmacy. There were signs with the inscriptions “Death to Jews” and “Cut the throats of the Jews.”

A synagogue in Wuppertal, Germany, which had been rebuilt after being destroyed in Nazi Germany’s Kristallnacht in 1938, was attacked with Molotov cocktails.

In Mumbai (Bombay) in 2008 a group of terrorists walked through the city shooting people in cafés and hotels as they made their way to the Chabad Lubavich Center, where they killed the young rabbi and his pregnant wife.

Once I was flying back from Israel to Vilnius, and my fellow passenger complained the entire trip about how security checks at Ben-Gurion International Airport were an affront to his human dignity. No argument could convince him that it was for his own safety. So we apologize to those who are offended by the barbed-wire fence. I know no arguments will convince them that this is for your own security, just as my fellow passenger on the airplane could not be convinced.

Simas Levinas, chairman
Vilnius Jewish Religious Community

More Work To Do on Holocaust in Lithuania

by Efraim Zuroff

Lithuania is a country known for the great reverence and care with which family graves are treated. Earlier this month, on All Saints’ Day, all the cemeteries in the country were full of visitors bringing flowers and lighting memorial candles, and there were huge traffic jams near the larger ones in the major cities. Yet, unfortunately, this praiseworthy sensitivity does not extend to all the graves in Lithuania, and certainly not to many of the more than 200 mass murders sites of Holocaust victims scattered along the length and breadth of the country.

One such neglected mass murder site is that of Vėliučionys on the outskirts of Vilna (Vilnius). I had visited the grave together with Lithuanian writer Rūta Vanagaitė in the summer of 2015 as part of our research on Lithuanian complicity in Holocaust crimes and the sad state of some of the murder sites, for our book, Mūsiškiai, which was published earlier this year.

Although a marker on the road pointed to a mass grave, it was misplaced, there was a large garbage dump right nearby and we never would have found the location without the help of a local resident who often picked mushrooms in the forest and knew where the murder had taken place.

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Exercise in Democracy, or Futility?

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by Geoff Vasil

The “discussion” organized by the Vilnius city council on November 29 on whether to change an earlier decision to name a street after a Lithuanian Nazi leader in the center of Vilnius was an unmitigated disaster.

In fact, there was no evidence the Vilnius municipality organized anything at all. The main force and the only real announcer of the event was Vilnius City Council member Mark Adam Harold, aka Mark Splinter, a British expatriate who has been trying to get the street renamed to no effect for some time. Harold himself denied he was the organizer, but he was the main speaker and spoke bravely and forthrightly in favor of changing the street name.

The whole point seemed to me to be to shame Vilnius mayor Remigijus Šimašius with media attention into relinquishing his blocking the proposed change. Unfortunately only scant and local media attention was shed, the event having been all but suppressed until one day before it happened, leaving interested parties believing they had been excluded from the supposedly public forum.

Readers will recall mayor Remigijus Šimašius promised in writing to specify a location in Vilnius by October 20, 2016, for erecting a monument to Holocaust rescuers. No such site has been named to date. Instead the Vilnius municipal body claims work is going forward behind the scenes on creating the actual monument. One assumes they will place it in a dark forest far from public sight, as things stand now, sometime in the summer of 2047.

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Chairwoman Faina Kukliansky’s Statement on Renaming Kazys Škirpa Alley in Vilnius

Because of the short notice given, the Lithuanian Jewish Community was unable to send a speaker to the Vilnius municipality’s discussion renaming Kazys Škirpa Alley held in Vilnius on November 29. Chairwoman Faina Kukliansky sent a statement which was read out loud at the discussion which follows.

The discussion initiated by the municipality of Vilnius being held today, “Should We Change the Name of Kazys Škirpa Alley?,” might have been called something else. Why not ask the citizens of Lithuania if they want to have public spaces in Vilnius named after suspected Holocaust perpetrators instead?

On the one hand, the very concept of the discussion appears strange. Does Lithuania have no one of whom to be proud, so that we can only lionize a person famous for his anti-Semitic statements, his vision of a Lithuania free of Jews and his idealization of Hitler’s Germany?

On the other hand, for most of society Kazys Škirpa doesn’t signify much, and the forum being held should theoretically at least shed some light on different aspects of his personality. Hopefully historians unafraid to express their positions and not subservient to the right-wing have been invited to participate. Were state institutions which use the word “Jew” in their titles invited to participate? Probably not.

When we marked the 75th anniversary of the Holocaust in Lithuania, there was a conference at the parliament where the historian A. Kasparavičius said all of the “power” in the Provisional Government of Lithuania and the Lithuanian Activist Front was in Škirpa’s hands. The historian noted Škirpa made no attempt to hide his enchantment with Germany and spent more than 10 years there, working as consul and later as military attaché. It was during this period, between 1933 and 1934, when Škirpa’s documents sent from Berlin to Kaunas show how enthralled he was with the policies being carried out by Germany. “He had many problems because of this. President Antanas Smetona even raised the question of relieving K. Škirpa from diplomatic service at the end of the winter in 1939,” Kasparavičius said. But Škirpa wasn’t fired. He created the Activist Front in Berlin. Members of the Front sought to liberate Lithuania from Soviet occupation and organized the uprising in 1941. They foresaw a free Lithuania without Jews. It was Škirpa’s idea to create the Tautinio darbo apsaugos batalionas [TDA, National Labor Security Battalion] who shot thousands of Jews without trial at the Seventh Fort in Kaunas.

After the Soviets occupied Vilnius in 1940, Kazys Škirpa organized the nucleus of the Lithuanian Activist Front in Berlin. LAF propaganda followed official fascist propaganda, which led to Lithuanians’ active involvement in perpetrating the Holocaust. He was named [Lithuanian] prime minister in the uprising of June 23, 1941. In accepting the post of prime minister, Škirpa included in his government Rapolas Skipitis and Vytautas Landsbergis-Žemkalnis. His government included 11 ministers: 4 from Vilnius (Vytautas Bulvičius, Vladas Nasevičius, Vytautas Statkus, Jonas Masiliūnas), 6 from Kaunas (Juozas Ambrazevičius, Jonas Matulionis, Adolfas Damušis, Balys Vitkus, Juozas Pajaujis, Vytautas Landsbergis-Žemkalnis), resident of Berlin Rapolas Skipitis, plus comptroller Pranas Vainauskas. [Prevented from leaving Berlin, his minister Juozas Ambrazevičius was appointed acting prime minister in Kaunas.]

The position of the Lithuanian Jewish Community regarding the question posed by the discussion is clear: the name of Kazys Škirpa Alley must be changed. If only to honor all Lithuanian citizens.

As this discussion takes place, the Lithuanian Jewish Community yet again reminds readers there is still no monument to rescuers of Jews, to Righteous Gentiles, in Vilnius. Neither are there public places in the city named after famous Litvaks who contributed to establishing Lithuanian statehood and strengthening democratic institutions. Lithuanian history textbooks still make no mention of 600 years of shared Lithuanian and Litvak history. What sort of priorities is the Lithuanian state setting for itself?

Faina Kukliansky, chairwoman

Pasvalys, Lithuania Commemorates Kazys Škirpa

Pasvalys įamžino K. Škirpos atminimą
lzinios.lt

Namajūnai in the Pasvalys region of Lithuania, where Kazys Škirpa was born 121 years ago, has erected a stone monument to commemorate him. Namajūnai is a village with one house right on the Lithuanian border with Latvia. Kazys Škirpa, the first Lithuanian volunteer soldier, politician and public figure, was born there in 1895. He died in 1979. Alderman Algimantas Mašalas of the Saločiai aldermanship where Namajūnai is located said the wise people of Pasvalys had been calling for years for commemoration of the birthplace of their most famous [sic, infamous] native son, Kazys Škirpa.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

Rimvydas Valatka on Changing the Name of Škirpa Alley

Rimvydas Valatka on changing name of Škirpos alley

Stupidity so bravely jumps upon the soap-box in Lithuania now that there is nothing left to be surprised at, except perhaps that there are people still surprised at stupidity. But there are worse things than stupidity. This happens when politicians instead of making a decision attempt to hide cowardly behind political discussions.

This happened in Vilnius yesterday when the city municipality held a discussion called “Should We Change the Name of Kazys Škirpa Alley?” The municipality announced the discussion was being held because “arguments have arisen in society about the name of Škirpa Alley.”

What can this sort of political discussion change, except that Lithuania as a European state will attract greater shame? Do we really need to discuss whether only an anti-Semite who personally shot innocent people is bad or whether those who inspired him to the act might also be bad, in the 21st century in Vilnius, on whose city limits is the Ponar mass grave where all the Jews of the city were shot?

It’s beyond absurd to hold this sort of political discussion. Colonel Kazys Škirpa began his career as a hero, he was the first volunteer soldier, and later became ambassador to Berlin. Kazys Škirpa would have remain a hero forever if he hadn’t been the leader [sic, founder] of the anti-Semitic Lithuanian Activist Front which called for the murder of Jews.

No political discussion can deny this fact. As with other facts in our painful 20th century history.

Vilnius mayor Remigijus Šimašius instead of making a decision to change the name of the street is hiding behind a political discussion by several people especially selected by the city. This draws 21st century Lithuania into yet another shameful conflict. With our own history just as much with the values which Lithuania adopted entering the European Union and NATO.

Commentary broadcast on Lithuanian National Radio.

For Your Freedom and Ours?

by Sergejus Kanovičius

For our freedom and yours, we heard this motto during the independence movement in 1990 inviting everyone–Lithuanians, us Jews, and others–to rally to fight for independence. And we rallied, believing that in that Lithuania–the Lithuania of today–we would all be equal, and not just before God. We thought we’d be equal before memory, and before our history. As brothers and sisters. Are we equal in memory? Are we equal before history?

What about today, when discussion has come up whether it is worth honoring with a street name a volunteer soldier who fought for Lithuanian independence, the first to raise the tricolor on the castle tower almost a century ago, a man who commanded a different sort of movement, one which systematically and openly called for freedom only for some, before and after the June Uprising.

His ideology and that of his organization, the Lithuanian Activist Front, was inseparable from that of the battle for independence. For independence without Jews–without me, without my father, my grandparents and of those for whom there are annual bureaucratic gatherings to feel ashamed beside the larger pits, or beside those for whom the television cameras await.

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Remove Indecent Monuments of a Painful Past

by Robert van Voren

In the summer of 2015 Vilnius municipality removed four Soviet statutes on the Green Bridge linking the suburb Šnipiskes with the city center. The statutes represented farmers, students, industrial workers and “defenders of peace”, depicting Soviet soldiers who liberated the city from the Nazis in 1944 and subsequently imposed the second Soviet occupation. The statutes were a prime example of Soviet realism and for Soviet standards quite innocent: there was little heroism to be seen, no images of political leaders like Lenin or Stalin, just examples of four classes of Soviet citizens being part of Soviet life. Yet for Vilnius mayor Remigijus Šimašius they depicted a lie and for that reason should not be retained: “The statues represent a lie. Their heroic portrayal of the Soviet people – that is all a lie … The statues are a mockery of the real people who had to live during the Soviet period.”

I remember some 6-7 years ago an exhibition of Soviet design was held in one of Vilnius’ museums. My stepson was then a young adolescent, and walked around in a world that had ceased to be and images of which had almost disappeared from every day life. A brand new Moskvich was standing in one of the halls, household tools that were dysfunctional yet in a strange way beautiful, and in one corner a television screen showed a clip of residents receiving their brand new flats in Fabioniškės. People were smiling, dancing, happily receiving their key and entering the flat for the first time. “That is all fake, right?” my son asked, “of course they were not happy, they are acting.”

The fact is that people were happy, very happy even, finally being able to move in a brand new flat, often coming from a noisy crammed kommunalka, and have their own private environment. What is a lie is to pretend that people were not happy. Soviet life was maybe much more grey than life in an open society based on the rule of law, but millions of Lithuanians led happy lives, even if alone because they knew no other.

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