Recycling Cemeteries Ch 6 pg 13
After October 1944 suddenly all these traditions, including old Baltic practices, were destroyed and the cemeteries vandalized. Perhaps more so than in other Soviet occupied areas, Klein Litauen presented an unusual combination of anti-German feeling, anti-Christian sentiment, and a need for revenge on both the part of the Lithuanians and the Russians. However the Lithuanians generally are Catholics, and it is the major religion of the country today. The cemeteries, full of all the heavy symbolism and taboos regarding death and desecration, resurrection, traditional burial practices, lure of riches beneath the ground, offered an opportunity to truly destroy the ancestors of the vanquished enemy. This is a familiar theme throughout history, something very primal to desecrate the dead, especially that of one’s enemies. And this they did.
In order to stop major flooding of the Memel River, the Soviet authorities needed to raise the damn at Kaukehmen. The material they used to do this was easily found in the big, still in use, cemeteries in Kaukehmen. An eyewitness recounts how everywhere there lay rotted body parts and at the damn were all sorts of other grave contents piled up and sticking out through the dirt.
The authorities also found plenty of other uses for the cemeteries. Road construction was another pressing need, which is what was done with the cemetery in Gruenheide. Problem was, when you drove along this street you could hear the wheels cracking the bones and in the ditches you could see human skulls lying about.
Soviet Collectives Ch6/pg 8
One day long ago before the War, my mother and her sister were in the Gnieballen cemetery. They came upon an extra stone that marked a grave near the family sites. When they returned home they asked Mama about who was buried there. She gave them the usual ‘don’t ask questions’ response. Sometime later, they were again at that same cemetery. They went to check on that curious marker they saw at their last visit. It was gone! A mystery! How could a grave marker disappear? Even more mysterious is that later they found it stashed in the attic of their own home. My mother always suspected it was the grave site of a child her mother had out-of-wedlock after WWI, before she married Julius. This child was the result of a brief liaison with a soldier passing through the area in World War I. There were several fierce battles in this area, notably in August 1917 as described in Solzhenitsyn’s novel of the same name. The grave and the baby were never spoken of, but so much of what occurred was never discussed. Family secrets, shame, disappointments.
After parking the car properly and securely, we got out and walked into the woods on the hunt for the Redetzki family cemetery of Gnieballen. Mom has a vague idea of where this cemetery was, but the woods back then were not as dense and widespread as they are now. It seems most all of this forest growth has occurred since the war, at least according to the topographic maps I have to guide me in my quest.
The Soviets in their drive to establish big collective farms effectively put an end to the European practice of small, farms scattered across the countryside. It disappeared from the former communist countries as they were organized into collectives owned by the state. In the U.S., the small towns began disappearing with the advent of farm mechanization and the automobile. The depression and dust bowl problems quickened this process. But the Russians actively destroyed the villages in part to obliterate traces of the previous cultures, and mainly to facilitate the collective system. They didn’t foster independence, you worked together for the greater good, or that was the dogma they put forth. They eliminated houses in areas where there were housing shortages. People forced out of homes, out of farm plots, forced out of means to support at least themselves. The great plan looked good on paper but in practice was a dismal failure.
Car Rental Lithuanian Style Ch 3/pg 5
Oh now we are oh too full, but in a very promising mood about what this country holds for us. While waiting for my mother to come down and join me for breakfast, I went ahead and made arrangements for her to have a massage. I thought she’d enjoy that after her long flight. So she heads off for her massage and I head outside for a walk to get my preview of the county.
Early morning rush hour, people hustle along the streets. The location of the hotel is on a river or perhaps a canal, I can’t quite be certain which. The city feels vibrant and alive with activity. I know this is a port city but I can’t see any signs of a harbor even as I try to follow the river. And the weather is lovely. The site is in an area of north of the city center. My mother remembers a less built up area years ago. After about an hour walk I head back to the hotel.
Oh did she ever love her massage! This is a first ever massage ever for her. She got beat up real good by a genuine Russian trained masseur so by her standards that means it was excellent. It has to hurt to do you good. She’s already talking with excitement about another appointment when we return.
Now we meet with our rental car agent who is meeting us at the hotel. Algeridas, first name basis, is prompt and even speaks English! This is a real surprise to me. There hasn’t been that much time for the country to get English in the school since the border opened. In the past everyone had to learn Russian possibly English sometime later in their schooling. This young entrepreneur is 20-ish and already fluent in English. I found his agency on the internet and the prices were so much better than those of the American companies. So what if I’m driving a used Opal instead of a new Volkswagen. Anyway, I find it better not being too conspicuous as a foreigner. Forget that Mercedes!
Ch 2 We Take Flight pg 6
makes us hungry. Yes, prices are high like any airport and costly like everything in Europe. Maybe the problem with food in America is precisely that it is too cheap, so we treat it like garbage.
We sit comfortably overlooking the concourse talking while we eat and drink. This is such a nice stopover treat. It is typical of them to be so thoughtful. They are both long retired, but the airport it is quite a drive from their home. It comes time to part from Irmgard and Alfred. Fond farewells, more hugs, and we’ll see them in ten days.
Back to our gate and we board Air Lithuania for the flight on to the city of Palanga, sited on the shores of the Baltic Sea. I imagined that Air Lithuania was an outfit that would be pretty much on par with Aeroflot, the infamous Russian airline, in terms of outdated planes, non-existent service and generally the category of fly at your own risk. Are there going to be goats and chickens squawking in the aisles? Will we make it alive? Will the pilot need assistance flying the airplane?
Was I ever in for a surprise. After some initial confusion at the gate, due to there being two flights were leaving for Lithuania at the same time – one for the capital city Vilnius and the other for Palanga, things were fine. Once on board it turned into a truly pleasant flight.
After a short time in the air we are served a cold plate for dinner. Lovely sandwiches made of hearty bread, smoked salmon and garnish. And to sweeten the palate, a tasty candy made by Kraft Foods in Lithuania – somehow reassuring to know that capitalists have already made inroads. For our beverage we get a beer. It is simple. It is delightful. It tastes wonderful. The staff is nicely attentive in a sort of throwback to air travel years ago.
Ch 2 We Take Flight pg 3
about Detroit Metro – but it is a real downer to the start of a trip for which we have such great anticipation.
So why am I putting myself through this torture of airports and cramped airplanes, countless waits, running for shuttles, travel with an elderly mother, crammed into uncomfortable and inhumanely tight seats risking blood clots, airborne diseases and other unanticipated horrors? I am taking my mother back home, to see a place of such influence on her life, where she spent her youth.
Mother is Edith Klemm, née Brumpreiksch. Home is a place she last saw 57 years ago. She was fleeing the country with her sister, escaping in front of rapidly advancing enemy Russian troops. Home is the cities of Heydekrug and Grabuppen in Memelland, East Prussia.
None of us could ever have even dreamed that it was even remotely possible to visit Memelland. I would have paid closer attention when the family talked about the place, but it was so remote and not like a real place I could actually visit, say like Hamburg or Berlin. We could visit our relatives in the east so I knew a bit about that area. And we accepted as fact that our relatives in the east side were stuck, never to be able to travel out of their country west, to visit places they dreamed of. Now, in such a short time everything changed, history overturned and the last fifty years erased, an entire ideology made obsolete overnight. No more tense border crossings, guard dogs, searches for decadent western printed matter, costly visa applications, absurd registration formalities upon entry and exit. No more paranoid regimes. We don’t have to exchange western money for each day we stay in the workers paradise. It all sounds so ridiculous so many
Ch 1 Plan pg 5
But travel was totally out of the question due to so many obstacles, mainly simple logistics. The only way to get to Kaliningrad Oblast, the former East Prussia, from Germany was to drive, directly across Poland, making sure the car wasn’t stolen from under us enroute. My cousin wasn’t about to risk his family car. Car rental companies wouldn’t even talk to you if you even breathed a hint of Poland; too much risk. And it would be a long drive, not like taking the U.S. Interstate across three time zones in one day. More like two to three days to get through Poland alone!
Then try to get across the border into what effectively was Russia, for which you’d need visas with permission for specific dates of entry and exit. Anyway, we knew from the accounts of other travelers that the village where the Klemm family lived was gone. Sources on the internet, such as Russians from the area, warned me about the dangers of traveling through the Kaliningrad Oblast countryside. Also, they had major Aids and crime problems. Our dream trip never came to be. And things haven’t changed in that enclave of ethnic Russians clinging to a life slightly better than what Mother Russia offers.
So I decided I wanted to see old Memelland. I wanted a sense of my roots, be inspired by a landscape that would call up primal feelings of belonging, see the homesteads of my forefathers, make a living connection with a past known only by those small black and white photographs and tales told around a table filled with mother, father, aunts, cousins, smoke and cognac. Okay, I’m getting old and just wanted to see where my ancestors came from. I never experienced a home with grandmother and grandfather, or saw where parents grew up. It was the 1960’s before I even got to see a picture of the house where I was born. I didn’t even know my own birthplace. When we went back to Germany in
Ch 1 PLAN pg 1
I started out as a child. But this story isn’t about me; it’s about my mother, her family,, their lives. And my father, he has a major role. Somehow this story where I’m retelling my mother’s stories ends up with a lot about me. I do enlighten, expand, give some historical background and of course, provide a running commentary. So it might have indirectly turned out to be about me. But I am the product of what came before me – and therein in the point.
There in the ether, on the internet, I discovered the country of Lithuania. Well, I did already know it existed, plus a little more about the country than your average American. Mostly I knew it in the context of a country my grandmother steadfastly maintained we had no connection with whatsoever! Not in any way shape or form. Ever!
The country has been part of the Soviet empire since the last days of World War II when the Allied Forces let the Red Army keep all the land they quickly occupied (along with all of Eastern Europe). The result was the country was largely closed to outsiders to keep the noble workers free from a scurrilous plague called capitalism. They were behind Churchill’s infamous ‘Iron Curtain’. I knew about this curtain of communism as a place where I was born and a place my family had to flee twice. It was only in my college years I was finally able to visit relatives in the staunchest communist country of all: the German Democratic Republic (that other half of Germany). So I knew about real life under communism: travel obstacles, economic problems life under a totalitarian political and economic regime. I had family over there – uncle, aunt, cousin – separated, locked behind the curtain of the workers paradise. Why do people have to be locked up in paradise so that they’ll stay?
