Tag #145214 - Interview #91277 (Zalman Kaplanas)

One of the teachers in our lyceum, a Catholic priest, who taught Lithuanian language, differed from others by his extreme left, even Communist views. He had to conceal his beliefs as at that time Lithuania was reined by an extreme nationalist party. The teacher trusted me for some reason and asked me to buy daily newspapers for him. There were three daily newspapers in Lithuania at that time, the pro-government ‘Echo Lithuania,’ the Catholic ‘The Twentieth Century’ and the social democratic ‘Izvestiya’ [Editor’s note: It is unlikely that a Lithuanian newspaper had a Russian name (Izvestiya was a major Soviet paper). Since the interview was conducted in Russian it is possible that the interviewee drew an analogy with the Soviet paper.] I bought all of them for the priest and managed to read them from cover to cover. That is why I was aware of what was happening in Germany, France and the USSR. I knew all the French prime ministers. I knew about the policies of Fascists and Hitler’s attitude toward the Jews. True things about the USSR were published in the papers, news of repression and arrests of the innocent people [12]. Apart from reading papers every day I listened to the radio at home.