Tag #118135 - Interview #100315 (Geta Jakiene)

Leya met me at the train station. It reminded me of our meeting in Klaipeda. Now were laughing out loud as both of us managed to survive. She took me in her room. Leya was a housekeeper of some well-off people and lived in a small room for a maid in their apartment. I stayed with her. During the first days we could not help talking. Each of us told about adversities. I found out bitter truth from Leya: my father Gerts Ushpits, his wife and two children perished in Skakai. They were shot in the first days of occupations along with other Jews. My grandmother and all her grandchildren were executed in Prenai. Only Leya, Meishe and me were the only ones out of our entire family, who survived the war. Leya and Meishe were in Kaunas. They had stayed in Kaunas ghetto during the entire period of occupation and saw all horrors of that. Before ghetto was liquidated, Leya and Meishe managed to find a shelter and survive somehow. There were some people upon liberation, who blamed Meishe for treason. As they told that he allegedly gave away children’s crib (editor’s note.: in ghetto crib was the shelter, where Jews were) and children died in ghetto because of him. It was a slander, but neither Meishe nor Ghetto were able to prove the truth. My brother was to go through the trial and he was sentenced to 10 years in severest camp. By the came when I came back in Lithuania, Meishe had been in Siberia having to go through underserved punishment. During the first day of our arrival Leya and I went to Shakai and Prenai and saw terrible pits in the area where our kin was executed.