Father died in 1948. We invited an old Jew to read a prayer over the dead, though at that time it was fraught with danger and trouble for us, the Communists. I took my father’s death very hard.
- Traditions 11756
- Language spoken 3019
- Identity 7808
- Description of town 2440
- Education, school 8506
- Economics 8772
- Work 11672
- Love & romance 4929
- Leisure/Social life 4159
- Antisemitism 4822
-
Major events (political and historical)
4256
- Armenian genocide 2
- Doctor's Plot (1953) 178
- Soviet invasion of Poland 31
- Siege of Leningrad 86
- The Six Day War 4
- Yom Kippur War 2
- Ataturk's death 5
- Balkan Wars (1912-1913) 35
- First Soviet-Finnish War 37
- Occupation of Czechoslovakia 1938 83
- Invasion of France 9
- Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact 65
- Varlik Vergisi (Wealth Tax) 36
- First World War (1914-1918) 216
- Spanish flu (1918-1920) 14
- Latvian War of Independence (1918-1920) 4
- The Great Depression (1929-1933) 20
- Hitler comes to power (1933) 127
- 151 Hospital 1
- Fire of Thessaloniki (1917) 9
- Greek Civil War (1946-49) 12
- Thessaloniki International Trade Fair 5
- Annexation of Bukovina to Romania (1918) 7
- Annexation of Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union (1940) 19
- The German invasion of Poland (1939) 94
- Kishinev Pogrom (1903) 7
- Romanian Annexation of Bessarabia (1918) 25
- Returning of the Hungarian rule in Transylvania (1940-1944) 43
- Soviet Occupation of Bessarabia (1940) 59
- Second Vienna Dictate 27
- Estonian war of independence 3
- Warsaw Uprising 2
- Soviet occupation of the Balitc states (1940) 147
- Austrian Civil War (1934) 9
- Anschluss (1938) 71
- Collapse of Habsburg empire 3
- Dollfuß Regime 3
- Emigration to Vienna before WWII 36
- Kolkhoz 131
- KuK - Königlich und Kaiserlich 40
- Mineriade 1
- Post War Allied occupation 7
- Waldheim affair 5
- Trianon Peace Treaty 12
- NEP 56
- Russian Revolution 351
- Ukrainian Famine 199
- The Great Terror 283
- Perestroika 233
- 22nd June 1941 468
- Molotov's radio speech 115
- Victory Day 147
- Stalin's death 365
- Khrushchev's speech at 20th Congress 148
- KGB 62
- NKVD 153
- German occupation of Hungary (18-19 March 1944) 45
- Józef Pilsudski (until 1935) 33
- 1956 revolution 84
- Prague Spring (1968) 73
- 1989 change of regime 174
- Gomulka campaign (1968) 81
-
Holocaust
9685
- Holocaust (in general) 2789
- Concentration camp / Work camp 1235
- Mass shooting operations 337
- Ghetto 1183
- Death / extermination camp 647
- Deportation 1063
- Forced labor 791
- Flight 1410
- Hiding 594
- Resistance 121
- 1941 evacuations 866
- Novemberpogrom / Kristallnacht 34
- Eleftherias Square 10
- Kasztner group 1
- Pogrom in Iasi and the Death Train 21
- Sammelwohnungen 9
- Strohmann system 11
- Struma ship 17
- Life under occupation 803
- Yellow star house 72
- Protected house 15
- Arrow Cross ("nyilasok") 42
- Danube bank shots 6
- Kindertransport 26
- Schutzpass / false papers 95
- Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1943) 24
- Warsaw Uprising (1944) 23
- Helpers 521
- Righteous Gentiles 269
- Returning home 1090
- Holocaust compensation 112
- Restitution 109
- Property (loss of property) 595
- Loss of loved ones 1724
- Trauma 1029
- Talking about what happened 1807
- Liberation 558
- Military 3322
- Politics 2640
-
Communism
4468
- Life in the Soviet Union/under Communism (in general) 2592
- Anti-communist resistance in general 63
- Nationalization under Communism 221
- Illegal communist movements 98
- Systematic demolitions under communism 45
- Communist holidays 311
- Sentiments about the communist rule 930
- Collectivization 94
- Experiences with state police 349
- Prison/Forced labor under communist/socialist rule 449
- Lack or violation of human and citizen rights 483
- Life after the change of the regime (1989) 493
- Israel / Palestine 2190
- Zionism 847
- Jewish Organizations 1200
Displaying 44881 - 44910 of 50826 results
Riva Smerkoviciene
![](/themes/custom/centro/flags/lt.svg)
As they say, when it rains, it pours. It was the time when state anti-Semitic campaigns commenced. Luckily they didn’t affect my husband: he kept on working as he was a respectable man. The Jewish orphanage became a target. It was constantly criticized. We had commissions and audits. They did their best in order to destroy the Jewish kindergarten. By that time the Jewish school had been closed down. They sent non-Jewish employees and foster children there – Russians and Lithuanians in order to pursue assimilation.
In 1952 when the Doctors’ Plot [22] rang out in the country, I was charged with poisoning a Lithuanian boy. Good thing, my husband insisted that I should quit my job, so that I wasn’t sued. It was a deep personal tragedy. I exerted my every effort at work and was very dedicated to children.
My husband helped me find a job in a republican library. I was well accepted by the team. I worked there until retirement.
In spite of the things going on in the country, my husband and I sincerely believed in Communist ideas, thinking that all those events were caused by people on the ground. We raised our children in the spirit of dedication to Lenin’s ideas and Stalin. I think there wasn’t any other family, which would spend so much time with children, having conversations about the leaders and Communism. We told them about our underground activity. We took them to the museums, showed them the jails, where we were detained. There was my picture in the jail among other inmates. We mostly spoke Russian, sometimes Lithuanian at home. The Jewish language was rarely spoken by us.
Stalin’s death in 1953 was a personal tragedy for us. I cried all night long and woke the children up with my sobbing. On the day of the funeral we came to Stalin Avenue with crape bands. There was no traffic in the street, the city was imbued with the mourning honks of cars.
The ХХ Party Congress [23] was like a bolt of lightning amidst blue skies, as well as Nikita Khrushchev’s speech [24], where he revealed Stalin’s cult of personality. We couldn’t believe that as all our ideals were shattered. I remember one night when Stalin’s monument was dismantled in Vilnius central square. On the way to work everybody was shocked that the square was empty. It was horrible. However, my husband and I found the strength to understand and correctly assess what was going on. The fact that Stalin turned out to be an enemy, didn’t diminish the attractiveness of Communist ideas. We were still members of the Party. At that time I wasn’t involved in social life, but my husband was an active party member.
Our family treated Israel in accordance with the propaganda in the Soviet press. We read the papers and believed the things written there. Even in the years when Israel was at war, we took the information the way it was covered by the Soviet propaganda: where Israel was a malefactor and a horrible aggressor, having attacked helpless Arabs. We didn’t dare express our judgment on Israel in front of our children, trying not to focus their attention on that. There was no way we could immigrate to that country.
We lived modestly. We didn’t have a car. We enjoyed no riches. In the 1970s we got a tiny plot of land, and tilled it the best way we could [25]. Here we used to spend our summer vacations with our children.
First, Lena went to a Jewish school. Soon it was closed down. She went to a Russian school, and finished it successfully. I plied my daughter with love for books and she decided to follow into my footsteps. Lena entered Vilnius University, the extramural library department. However, the teaching in Lithuanian turned out to be hard for Lena and soon she was transferred to the library department of the Leningrad institute, which she successfully finished. Lena married a Russian man, Gennadiy Grigoriev. He was a military, demobilized in Kaunas. Lena and her husband traveled all over the huge former Soviet Union. She lived in many cities of Lithuania, as well as in Odessa and Nikolayev. In 1975 Lena’s daughter Natasha [Natalia] was born.
My son finished a Russian school, where Lena had also been studying. Upon finishing it, he entered the Vilnius Polytechnic Institute and graduated from the sanitary faculty. Ilia married a Lithuanian when he was a student. Thus, our family happens to be international. In 1970 Alina gave birth to a daughter, Diana. Diana married a Lithuanian, Deinis, and left for Germany in the 1990s. My great-grandchildren were born there: a boy, Karolis, and a girl, Camilla. Ilia’s younger daughter Laura was born in 1986. She is currently studying at the Polytechnic Institute.
My husband and I took the events related with the separation of Lithuania from the USSR very hard. Lithuania gained its independence in 1991 [26]. Our adolescence ideals were crushed. The ideals we had devoted our youth and lives to were crushed.
Thanks to my sister, I found out about the Kaunas Jewish community. It was the only positive consequence of the independence of Lithuania that Jews obtained their own community and reestablished Jewish community life.
I, who had never celebrated Jewish holidays and had never observed traditions, felt joy when the traditions were revived. I celebrate Sabbath and go to the community when I physically can. Recently the Jewish fall holidays were celebrated in the community, and I participated in celebrations along with other Jews in the Kaunas synagogue. I involuntarily recalled a prayer, taught by my father, the rites, the Hebrew words I hadn’t used for years. I get assistance from the community, and I’m grateful to those who are providing it for me.
Gutman proposed to me and on 31st December 1940 we got our marriage registered in the marriage registry office. My parents didn’t even insist on a Jewish wedding as they clearly understood that we would be against it, so they let us do as we wished.
I felt anxious and there were talks that German troops were deployed at the border. Late in the evening on 21st June I came back to Kaunas. At 4am the war broke out.
In 1934 my exile was over and I came back to Kaunas. Straight upon my return, I became a member of the underground Communist Party and zealously started working. There was a boom of revolutionary movement in that period of time as Fascists came to power in Germany and we were aware what kind of dreadful prospects it could bring to us. Our hopes were with the Soviet Union. We knew something about arrests and repressions [11] over there, but our sincere beliefs in the politics of the USSR and Stalin were so strong that we truly considered all those arrests to be fair. We continued our propaganda, taking any chance to stand up against Smetona’s regime.
In 1937 and in 1938 I was arrested again. I was arrested seven times before the Soviet regime [Occupation of the Baltic Republics] [12] came to power. In 1938 I was sent to the concentration camp in Dimitrav by administrative means. It was a very hard arrest. We worked in a quarry, breaking the stones with a heavy peck. Time flew by so fast for us, we were carried away with an idea. We looked towards the east with hope, anticipating the Soviet regime.
In summer 1940 I was exiled to Onuskis [30 km from Vilnius]. Of course, I had things to do when I was in exile. I even managed to establish a Communist group. We held demonstrations against the Smetona regime. Here in Onushkis, I found out that the Red Army came to Lithuania. We were delighted by the event and went out with the welcoming slogans. There was a lot of work apart from that: we had to organize accommodation for the Soviet military. I was eager to do that and organized accommodation for the Soviet soldiers. We were so happy to see them. We held them tight. In a while I came back home. Here I was met by my friends and family. My sister Hanna was set free from imprisonment. She worked in the nationalization committee, dealing with expropriation of the property of the rich and capitalists. I was appointed to the editors’ department of the Jewish paper Dir Enes - Pravda. That paper was published illegally before the Soviets came. Now it became the leading Yiddish Communist press for the Jewish population of Lithuania. I was often on business trips and collected materials for my articles.
We had a wonderful life. We lived to see things that we’d been waiting for for years. The power in Lithuania belonged to the poor. It was an overall euphoria. We went to the cinema, enthusiastically watched Soviet movies, walked in the parks and squares of our native town. My sister Hanna got married. Her husband Fyodor Filimonov was Russian, and my parents didn’t object to their marriage. Rochl was also married. She married a local Jew, Alter Kannenman, and in 1939 their daughter Zelda was born.
My paternal grandfather, Yakob – Lithuanians called him Yokubas – Gershenovich, was born in Kaunas in the 1860s. He lived with his wife, my grandmother Leya, in a small house on Grushevaya Street in Zelyonaya Gora [there is still a district in Kaunas with that name]. The streets in Zelyonaya Gora had the names of the trees, which were planted there: Grushevaya – pear tree, Slivovaya – plum tree, Vishnevaya – cherry tree. Such neutral names never changed, no matter who was in power and those street names still remain unchanged. Mostly poor people lived in this district, some of them were destitute. The population was mixed, like in other places all over Lithuania – Jews, Lithuanians and Russians. There were several synagogues there, which my grandfather Yakob attended with zeal.
Grandfather was a very religious man. Every Friday he went to the synagogue, having put on his festive kippah and tallit. Jewish customs and holidays were strictly followed in the house of my grandparents. Grandmother always covered her head with a simple kerchief, but on Saturday and on holidays she put on a white lacy kerchief and dressy apron. Both Grandfather and Grandmother Leya were very pious people and raised their children and grandchildren in a religious spirit.
Yakob worked as a warden at a brewery, owned by a German, Engelman. Grandfather spoke German with the owner. He was fluent in German as well as Yiddish and Russian. Of course, Leya didn’t work. She tried to save every kopeck to buy the necessary food, clothes and footwear and educate her children. Yakob had a steady income, but it was rather low, so the family was rather poor.
I know that both of my grandparents were buried at the Jewish cemetery in Kaunas in accordance with all Jewish rites and traditions.
Father’s second sister Sarah, born in 1889 also had a short life. Sarah was afflicted with tuberculosis since early childhood. It was strange that being so feeble she gave birth to three children. Sarah’s husband, Gersh Shteintlef, was a painter. Sarah died in 1938, the same year when her sister Chaya Feige passed away, leaving three children behind: her daughters, Toybl and Esther, and her son Chaim. All of them perished in Kaunas ghetto [2] with their father.
The youngest daughter in the family, Reizl, born in 1895, was much more well-to-do than the others. She married a tailor named Alexandrovich, who provided for his children rather well. She had two sons. One of them was called Ruvim. I don’t remember the other one’s name. In 1936 Reizl gave birth to a daughter, who was named after her grandmother Leya. During the war nobody from Reizl’s family survived – all of them perished in Kaunas ghetto.
My father had very poor eye-sight since childhood. He was practically disabled. Nonetheless, he managed to finish cheder as Grandfather Yakob couldn’t allow that his eldest son got no Jewish education. My father knew Yiddish, Hebrew and knew by heart several chapters of the Torah. There was no chance that Father could go on with his education – neither from the physical standpoint, his eye-sight, nor from the material one, as Father was the eldest out of the children and had to start working as soon as possible in order to help out his parents. When he turned twelve, Grandfather bought him a small, but strong horse and Father became a cabman. He transported production items of the concrete plant, the owner of which, a Jew called Tipograf paid rather skimpy money. The production items were rather heavy: stairs flights, concrete slabs, well discs, and Father couldn’t cope with loading or unloading them by himself. The most important thing is that he could barely see the road and couldn’t handle the horse. That is why Father hired an assistant, who traveled with him and with whom he shared his skimpy earnings. Thus, Father earned his bread and butter in adolescence and when he was a married man with a wife and children.
My mother came from the small Lithuanian town of Zarasai, located about 100 km away from Vilnius. There her parents rented land for a long time, keeping a small farmstead with dairy farming. They made sour-cream, butter and cheese from the milk of their own cows and took it to the market to sell.
The eldest, Motle, born in 1880, left for America in 1914. He changed his name there and started calling himself` Max. That was the way he signed his letters. He didn’t write very often. Motl’s fate was quite good. He became a businessman, got married and had children. I don’t remember their names. Motl helped our family a lot in the prewar times; he sent parcels and money. In the postwar Soviet times it was dangerous to keep in touch with people from Capitalist countries [3], so we stopped corresponding with my uncle.
,
Before WW2
See text in interview
Before the war Dovid’s eldest son Joseph finished a Teachers’ Training College and taught in Jewish schools in Lithuania. He turned out to be in Kaunas with his wife during the Great Patriotic War. Their daughter Getele was born in the ghetto, but the girl was very feeble and died shortly after the liberation. In 1945 Joseph and his wife left for the USA in order to forget what they had to go through and start a new life. He couldn’t obliterate his experiences from his memory. Joseph wrote a book about his life in the Kaunas ghetto. It was published in America with a huge circulation.