Digging up the Past in Lithuania

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Over 3000 people were murdered in Kupashok, from the town and the surrounding areas, with the biggest massacre happening at mass graves dug in the Jewish cemetery, once again located in the heart of the town. Nobody here can claim they did not know what was going on. In June 1940, when Russians took over the town, Jewish life was immediately attacked. Many Jews looked to escape to nearby towns or into Russia itself. When the Germans took over, local townspeople were agitated and encouraged to join the anti-Semitic purge. Those that tried to protect or harbour Jews were eventually ratted out and executed, including Catholic priests. Rabbis were tortured, Torahs were burnt, houses and businesses confiscated. Wealthy Jews bribed their way to survival for as long as they could, until they too were led into the forest. All across Europe, a cloud of evil rained hell on earth.
Genocide is a distinctly human trait - this cruel desire to murder an entire people. From Tasmania to Rwanda, Cambodia to Darfur, we are the only species on this planet that undertakes such heinous acts, perhaps because we are the only creatures smart, or dumb, enough to justify our actions. Chimps, our closest relatives, have been known to attack and murder rival clans, including infants. Females are usually absorbed into the new clan, and the violence is based around territory. Greed, ambition and military conquest have similarly resulted in the mass murder of people - North and South American Indians - but there is no rational reason to explain man’s inherent and unstoppable bloodlust. 2 plus 2 = 808, it doesn’t add up, it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t look good for our future as a human species either. Nuclear weapons can destroy more people than gas chambers, further removing white collar political killers from the dirty work, from any contact with their victims. The nuclear gun is loaded, and sooner or later, a hate-fuelled delusional fundamentalist will try and use it.

We drive into town to the ramshackle yellow wooden house of Veronica, a 91-year old woman who can still recall these terrible times. Ike and Abie are having a smoke outside. Popping in and out of lucidity, Veronica sings me a Yiddish lullaby in her dark, cold room, recalling her love for the Jewish children she once babysat. Suddenly, she leans forward, whispers:
“The Jews were better than the Lithuanians! They cared for each other, they helped each other.” Then her milky blue eyes glaze over and she sings another song, somehow burnt into her memory. Being poor, the Church granted Veronica and her husband some land, which overlooked the nearby Freethinkers Cemetery. Veronica watched the Jews marched to the pits, stripped to their underwear. Veronica watched the Jews being slaughtered.
“I cried,” she tells me, “I cried and cried. But what could I do? I still see their faces.”
I shiver. The smell of age in the house is thick. After a moment, she smiles, and then:
“I tried to save one family’s children. To hide them. But the family wouldn’t let me.”
“But weren’t you afraid that if you got caught, you would be killed,” I ask.
“No,” she says. “No.” She drifts off. I pop outside, see Abie playing with an old dog. Ike is looking out over the cemetery. There is no joy to breathe in the air.
“I have seen good times, and I have seen terrible times,” Veronica says when I re-enter the house, rubbing my hands to get some life back into them. “Good people, and terrible people.”
“Is there more good than bad?” I ask.
“About the same,” she says.
She sings another song, this time in Lithuanian, her granddaughter and great-grandson are visiting, and the toddler adds some energy to the void. When Veronica goes, who will be left in the town to remember?

The only hotel in town is being repaired, so we retire 40kms away to Rokishok for the night. It is Friday night, and while I’m not religious, I feel compelled to make Kiddish, a blessing over the food. All three of us have had an emotional day, and nobody is in the mood to visit the nightclub that has opened a few doors down. “How about Panaveyz, did the same happen there,” I inquire of Ike.
“The same, everywhere the same,” he says softly. “Same stories, all over Europe. Only difference between Panaveyz and Kupashok? 10,000 people, not 3000. More people, so first a ghetto. A few weeks later, into the forest, and then, gone.”
In the morning, we visit another site of mass graves, just outside of Rokishok, at a clearing cut into a beautiful pine forest not far from the highway. 3000 Jews were shot dead in this site alone, their bodies later exhumed by the Russians, counted, and reburied in the graves. A small granite plaque stands at the foot of the enclosure, carved with a Star of David and the words: Holocaust Mass Graves. It has been vandalized, the top chipped and broken off, and someone has fired bullets into it. The enclosure fence has been damaged. What kind of person defaces a mass grave? The same kind of person who digs one. They are still here. They are still everywhere. I don’t agree with its politics, and I often question its leadership, but when Abie pulls out an Israeli flag, my heart swells with pride. So long as that flag exists, there will not be another Jewish genocide, because, after thousands of years of being victims, Jews will no longer let it happen. If only we could stop it from happening to others (although it is clear why Vancouver’s Darfur protests were first instigated and brought to public awareness by members of the Jewish Community).

Ike, Abie and I stand alongside a mass grave in a forest. It is raining again, but birds are flying overhead, red mushrooms grow from the earth. Here, surrounded by tragic death, I am more grateful for life than I have ever been. I think about my family, no doubt currently wondering where the hell I am in the world, and wish I was with them so I could embrace them. I whisper a thank you to my great-grandparents, who bravely decided to leave this green European forest for the wild African veldt, and a prayer for whoever or whatever helped them along the way. I think about what might have been. Would I have been the mere dream of a person buried beneath my feet?

I suppose branches get cut down, but it takes more to kill a tree. Hmm, that’s pretty good. I turn around to tell Abie and Ike, only to find my grandfathers, walking arm in arm into the forest, aging fast, talking Yiddish, slowly evaporating amongst the autumn leaves of my imagination.

In Memory of my Grandfathers:
Abraham Esrock (15/10/1909 - 13/11/1996)
Samuel Isaac Kalmek (10/12/1910 - 04/10/1980)

Bernadino B&B
Vilnius, Lithuania
October 7, 2007

Special thanks to my fantastic guide, Regina Kopilevich, Ann Rabinowitz (who along with others has done so much to keep the memory of Kupashok alive), Michael Pertain, who has spent years researching our family’s past, and everyone from Word Travels for bringing me here to see it. You can read about my adventures in Poland with A Letter to My Grandmother, and find out more about Kupashok by clicking here.

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