Tag #116268 - Interview #100288 (Eta Gurvichuyte )

I met a Lithuanian lad Augustinas Savitskas. He was an artist. His fate is worth attention. His father, a Lithuanian, was an artist and a diplomat. He fell in love with a Jewish girl Ida from Shauilai. When he proposed to her, her parents flatly objected to their marriage. They did not want their daughter to marry a Lithuanian. Young people got married in spite of the parents’ will, who practically cut them off a shilling. The weds lived in full harmony and love. They had two children– the elder Algerdas, born in 1918 and Augustinas, who was my age. Augustinas’s father worked on a diplomatic mission in France. When the Soviets came in Lithuania, he decided not to come back to his motherland fearing that he might be arrested. I do not know what happened to him. Ida hung herself in Vilnius ghetto as she could not get over the adversities and ordeal. Elder brother Algerdas went through giyur in order to marry a Jew. He turned out to be in ghetto with his wife. He was free , but he decided to share the fate of his beloved. Both of them perished.