What’s Behind Coffin Number 3? Ch 6 pg 14

Some of the vandalism did fall to the local inhabitants. As a result of shortages on construction material they pilfered the metal fences and grave markers to use on their farms. Others stole anything that might be of value to sell – good granite and marble lay around for the taking. And then there were the actual graves, the bodies and what lay with them. Grave robbers looked for jewels, gold teeth, anything that maybe had a resale value. They dumped out the bodies and plundered the coffins. Maybe it is good that the forest now covers what once was the old cemetery of Gnieballen. Perhaps what remains now lies there in peace, reclaimed, never again to be disturbed.
These tactics of abolishing cemeteries not only served to destroy and cleanse the land of previous inhabitants, but it served as a warning to the current liberated citizens. The Soviets were know as atheists, but is it right to say that as a result this made them more brutal say than the Spanish Inquisition, or the Puritans burnings witches in Salem , Massachusetts? The degree of brutality or savagery is rather irrelevant. It does however seem a rather unique approach to ethnic cleansing by getting rid of those already dead. It perplexes me, this act of taking out vengeance on bodies long dead. More than anything it violates a long standing human taboo about corpses, for whatever reason.
Yet there is something that puzzles me yet, something relating to the current day. So many Germans go back, so many want to reclaim their land, so many have formed these pseudo political organizations to take back lost lands. Do none of them want to ‘rebury’ the dead? Is there no one to even gather the bones in an act of respect for ancestors, burying the past in a deeper sense?

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.

Ch 2 We Take Flight pg 7

The plane itself is a used American plane evidenced by the English language warning signs and markings.
I had no idea what awaited us in Lithuania. At least at this point in my life when traveling I have cash and charge cards so what can happen? This was a far cry from my student days where cash was tight and traveling cheap meant waiting around a lot to get into hostels. Had to get there early to make sure I got a cheap bed, otherwise where would I stay? I had no hotel backup. And now we don’t have to worry about being hauled off by the Stasi, or KGB, or whatever just because we are Americans, or do we? Are remnants of the old guard lurking in doorways waiting to nab us innocents?
Anyway, just how bad could a place be that is all over the internet? This is the first time I’ve used the internet for travel arrangements. I did have to write the bed and breakfast for confirm our reservations, but that was after seeing photos of the house online. It is amazing how quickly these countries became wired.
Then there is my mother, and she still worries about visiting a country that she knew fifty five years ago. It is still a country existing only in memories, a place where she never stayed in a hotel or ate in restaurants. Her family didn’t own a car; transport was by horse cart, foot, bike or train. Then there are the stories she’s heard and read about Germans who’ve traveled back in recent years when they were still a Soviet satellite. They tell of poverty and desolation and how difficult it was to secure any sort of transport to move about. These returnees didn’t like what they found. Mentally she is prepared for scenes similar to what she experienced on her trips to East Germany years ago – a colorless socialist monolithic; streets full of sullen, expressionless people; everyone watching what they said and who they talked to.

Ch 1 Plan pg 3

This area at the end of the Baltic Sea, closer to Scandinavia than mainland Germany, had a very different geography in the centuries before 1945. Between the Baltic States, Russia and Poland was the German Province of East Prussia. West Prussia was between Poland and Germany. After the war the province was divided up between Poland and the Soviet Union, who wanted to keep access to a major Baltic port for the reason that it wasn’t frozen for most of the year. This port was Konigsberg, once the principal city and administrative capital of East Prussia.
A small sliver of land in the northernmost area of the province, Memelland, where ownership was contested over many years went to Lithuania. The remaining southern portion of the province was given to Poland. And of course none of these divisions really mattered as it was all under the control of the Soviets, militarily, ideologically, and economically.
Since the days of detente between Germany and the Soviet Union in the 1970’s, tour groups began to shuffle aged Germans around the major sites of this former German province. No one other than these displaced Germans from the area wanted to go back. No one else had memories of the place. A new generation of Germans found it politically expedient to stop calling for the return of old German provinces. It offended the neighbors who now were friends. They need oil and gas from them and it was a great place to make loans with all that excess cash from the economic miracle that was now Germany. So you can’t have your neighbors thinking you want your land back. And Germany has finally learned that economic power is so much mightier with much better returns than military power.

Ch 1 Plan pg 2

The hypocrisy of communist ideology was that for any capitalist currency, like dollars, they quickly put aside their ideals. I could visit, but they couldn’t dream of coming out the other way. Any travel wasn’t easy. I needed a special visa just to visit relatives. Fortunately I could stay family with as hotels were scarce; foreign had to use specially designated hotels. Once you got the visa you could only be in certain parts of the country, couldn’t travel outside the county or province. And then I had to register with police in the county seat upon reaching my destination and before I left.
Oh yeah, and then there were the U.S. State Department warnings about the risk of being kidnapped and held for ransom by the communist menace. For years my father refused to go back, but that was mainly out of fear of not being able to get out again. He had enough of being held by the Soviets. Years in a prisoner of war camp and the life in the GDR were more than enough up close and personal time.
All said, these had not been good places to visit, especially when so many other countries actively encouraged travel, not discouraged it. You only went east to see relatives, or if you were the odd person in complete denial about the benefits of living in a worker’s paradise.
Well, then comes 1992 and communism collapses. This affords opportunities for entrepreneurs, western investment money and tourists! Initially, in Lithuania, tourists are only Germans who long to go back to rekindle memories of the places they left in their youth, as fast as they could run at the end of the war when Russian troops pushed them west. To the rest of the world these places are pretty unknown; they are so isolated geographically at the east end of the Baltic Sea. And they lack infrastructure necessary for tourism. So who would go there?

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?