rescued jewish children
From the memoirs of Samuelis Kuklianskis
I wanted very much to be a pioneer...
I wanted very much to be a pioneer. I liked all the pioneers’ symbols and order, but after the Alytus City pioneer gathering held in the former officer club, I wasn’t among those admitted to pioneers.
All my classmates were admitted to pioneers, except me... I was deeply hurt, which made me very distressed, even though childishly, because to my understanding at that time, I was treated as second-rate non-proletarian children.
However, I was sent to Palanga’s pioneer camp, which seems to have been the first camp of this kind. This happened thanks to my parents’ efforts, because they paid for my stay there.
At the camp, everything was done according to pioneers’ discipline and symbols. Certainly, we were taught the ideas of Communism, although we understood them in a very simple or peculiar manner (bourgeois must be beaten, etc.).
I remember that at that time, Palanga was wooden (villas were small and wooden), and everything was done for children. It was almost impossible to see adult holiday-makers, because you couldn’t notice them among all those children.
The fact that on 22 June 1941, the Second World War caught me at the Palanga pioneer camp affected my entire subsequent life.
I was a child who had seen in his life nothing but good. I was suddenly separated from my family. Separation from my parents at the beginning of the war also determined the fate of the parents. They could have attempted to retreat to the East, but their choice was limited – I wasn’t with them. The parents didn’t dare to leave me to my fate in the storm of the war.
Such a decision implied that our family was to face certain death or at least a humiliation, major financial difficulties, and in general a beggarly life far from normal and respectable living conditions.
However, let’s go back to Palanga. We, boys from the 5th squad of the 5th pioneer camp were aroused from sleep by cannonade – gunshots, explosions, smoke. We have never experienced such a pounding, smoke and fire before, so we got very frightened, some of us, especially girls, were weeping.
I remember somebody saying that the outstanding Lithuanian poet Salomėja Nėris, in her poem “Mama, kur tu”(“Mom, where are you”), had invented the terrors of the outbreak of the war which horrified the children at the Palanga pioneer camp.
The talented poet didn’t put a single word wrong. Indeed, on 22 June 1941 I wanted to shout: ‘Mom, where are you!’ I believe that most of the children, when crying, were silently shouting for their mothers.
One needs to experience a situation as we were in on the first day of the war in Palanga to be able to understand how much we, children, needed our mothers and our parents in general, how much we wanted (in fact, desired!) their care. Salomėja Nėris' poetic intuition let her understand it. All honour to her!
Pioneer leaders told us to gather in the yard and from the yard they brought us to the seashore. They were leading us to Šventoji. The journey was tiring – sea sand, a suitcase with clothes which my mother gave me back in Alytus, heat of summer sunshine, sea wind, and we were with clothes. A long line of children was formed in a short while.
Soon you could see the bags left in sand by the children, they threw them away, because it was difficult to carry them. I didn’t throw my bag away.
This is how the human, especially child’s, psyche is configured. Objectively, the future meeting with a mother itself was more than just plausible. Some teenagers, especially those of the Jewish nationality, who managed to get in Šventoji onto the trucks waiting there and were evacuated to the East, returned in 1944-1945 to Lithuania and no longer saw their mothers and fathers, because they had been shot down. However, at that time I was afraid that my mother would scold me for not having preserved the bag.
When we got to Šventoji in the afternoon, there were no longer any vehicles which had been assigned for the evacuation of children. Those who arrived to Šventoji earlier were lucky, they managed to get onto the trucks which carried them to the East.
We were caught up with, or perhaps overtaken, by the German vanguard and on 23 June local white-banded Lithuanians brought us back by foot to Palanga.
We were given food, and assigned a room of the 5th squad at the former pioneer camp for sleeping. The next day, a major division of children according to nationalities was held. On that day, my distinctive feature was the Jewish nationality. While playing with children of the camp, I learnt that apart from Jewish children, there were also Lithuanians, Poles and Russians. That is all I knew about nationalities. Now we learnt officially that we were Jews and that we would be separated from children of other nationalities, because Jews were rascals, their parents are Communists, Bolsheviks and that is why Lithuania lost its independence.
We, former Jewish children of the Palanga pioneer camp, were separated and brought the synagogues located nearby (at the place of today’s main grocery store, close the marketplace). There we were imprisoned in the direct sense of the word – we were even provided with an armed guard. Adult Jews of Palanga (men) had already been brought here. Out of Palanga’s residents, I remember only elderly Jews. At the synagogue, there were neither women, nor girls from the pioneer camp.
We were kept at the synagogue for two-three days. The abuse which we experienced was terrible. The most important was that we weren’t allowed to go to the toilet, we were forced to relieve nature directly in the synagogue, in the porch. For us, children, it wasn’t very important where to pee, but for practising Jews it was terrible to defile a holy place – synagogue. I saw their suffering. The men avoided to relieve nature in the synagogue until the very last moment, as long as they could endure and even more. People were hitting their heads to the wall, hitting the door of the synagogue, hysterically crying and asking and demanding to allow them to go outside to relieve nature. Our guards were just laughing at what was going on, it was a theatre performance for them.
Let me put an emphasis on yet another cynical kind of treatment of the white-banded in our respect. Obviously, we were hungry, and our tormenters would give us salty salted fish, but measured water out in doses. We were suffering from thirst. Salty food and cold water caused more frequent and profusive urination, and we were forced to do it in the synagogue.
We slept on the floor and couldn’t even dream of bedclothes, bedclothes would be a real luxury, an unreal dream. But you are a Jew after all, everything is forbidden to you, so just be happy that you are alive. It doesn’t matter that you are only eleven years old, and that old Jew is in his 90s – death will make you equal, and you will get to heaven together for your suffering.
From the synagogue, we, the teenagers, were brought to the stable of the former Soviet border guard. Now I no longer remember whether we had to go by foot or we were brought there in carriages. As far as I can recollect, the stable of the border guard was located in the neighbourhood of Palanga – in Kunigiškės. There were no longer any horses in the stable, and on the floor there was pretty much straw spread. Here was our accommodation.
In the stable, the conditions were better than in the synagogue, but a stable remains a stable. Cattle may be kept there, but not humans, the more so teenagers and children. Our daily routine was rather simple. We used to be awaken early in the morning by a guardsman hitting his automatic rifle on the door of the stable. After washing ourselves a bit, we used to join a queue to get food.
For breakfast, we would be given a few boiled potatoes and a handful of putrid pickled cabbage. You would simply join your palms and you would be put half a ladle of putrid cabbage. That cabbage had probably been kept for the border guard since the previous year or even earlier. Normal people would not eat such cabbage. But we were very hungry, so we ate them.
I no longer remember what they used to give us for lunch and dinner, but we, children, were constantly hungry. That is why, seizing the right moment we used to steal food – butter from the kitchen where we made to work (we would steal butter and carry it simply in our palms). Seizing the right moment, we used to steal from Palanga’s locals potatoes boiled in their skins, which they used to give to pigs. Anything which was eatable was eaten. It is a miracle that we didn’t get the runs, that food wasn’t intended for people. A satisfied animal would turn away from such a food.
Some residents of Palanga, especially those who lived in the vicinity of our stable and whose houses or farms we used to pass when brought to work, sometimes supported us with a slice of bread or a potato. I don’t have any explicitly manifested scorn towards us, Jewish teenagers, stuck in my memory. I would have remembered it.
However, the violence and taunting of guardsmen (we were guarded by young armed white-banded men, some of the guards seem to have also had green armbands) still are and will remain etched in my memory. A few of the guardsmen could have been non-Lithuanian, but it was mostly young armed Lithuanians who guarded us, derided and brutalised us.
I will mention just one action of derision and violence organised by Palanga’s local auxiliary police (hilfpolizei) and the police chief. As far as I remember, the surname of the chief policeman of Palanga was Adomaitis. He was a middle-age man with a pointed beard.
One afternoon, or early evening, we, former pioneers, were brought to the former official building of the Soviet military garrison. A so-called ‘show’ was to be held there, namely, demonstration of burning of Communist books and a bonfire for Jewish pioneers.
The Jews brought to that place were made to carry portraits of Lenin and Stalin turned upside down. The portraits of Stalin and Lenin were full-size, the sight was quite impressive. The portraits of other Soviet leaders were shown at waist length, their carrying upside down wasn’t very impressive. Taller children were selected to carry the portraits of Soviet leaders, also the portraits of Stalin and Lenin.
We, most of the children, had to carry several books each. I understood that we were carrying thick and very heavy Communist books. We were lined-up as if for a demonstration: in the front, there were standing two taller children holding the portraits of Lenin and Stalin at full length upside down, behind them there were children with the portraits of Communist leaders, also upside down. We followed them, each carrying several books.
We were taken to the Ronžė River, where the portraits and books were to be burnt. In a word, there were books replacing the wood, and there was a pioneers’ bonfire. It was a nice idea, wasn’t it?
The children didn’t want to put the items which had been brought to the bonfire to replace wood. We were beaten with sticks and whips until the portraits and books were put to the fire. Having lit several bonfires, our tormenters made us dance. What is a bonfire without dances, what is a pioneers’ bonfire without them?
The sight was very impressive: it was getting dark, and on this background there were burning books, with pioneers dancing around the bonfire.
Such a sight could probably be captured in photographs. I don’t know and I don’t remember whether we were being photographed, though Hitlerites could have made good fun of such a photograph.
We were forced to go to work every day. We used to sweep streets, clean the rooms where off-duty German soldiers were staying, we also cleaned the empty Jewish apartments in the centre of Palanga. The majority of the Jewish apartments were located on the second floor of stone houses. At the first floor, there were usually the shops belonging to the Jews living on the second floor. The apartments and shops of Palanga’s Jews were in the centre of the city, on the street where the bus station, the post, the police office and the court are located today.
I saw no Jews in Palanga. I saw no women, no children, no old or young people. Palanga had been cleaned from Jews, except for us, some one hundred children, the former holiday-makers at a pioneer camp.
At that time, I didn’t understand, or didn’t think, where the owners of the Jewish apartments we were cleaning had disappeared.
The stable where we were kept was guarded by armed young Lithuanians. We were unable to leave the premises freely, we were constantly accompanied by the guardsmen. Such was the background of our imprisonment in Palanga, and its content was forced labour, derision, a corporal punishment for the smallest fault.
Nevertheless, I resolved to run away. The escape was childish, that’s why it was unsuccessful, it was doomed to failure.
We decided to run away together with a friend of mine, I remember neither his surname nor name, I only know that just as me, he was from Alytus.
We left the stable unnoticed and entered Žemaičių road in the direction of Kaunas. We knew the direction, and we escaped in the daytime. A short while after entering the road, we saw a farmstead – a house and outbuildings. We decided to come in and ask for food.
The owner of the house welcomed us quite nicely. We were seated at a table, she gave us bread and a glass of milk. She was talking with much compassion. Unfortunately, her husband arrived soon; he had a green armband. I understood that he was serving in the auxiliary police. The man didn’t object to giving food to us, but he decided to bring us back to the stable. The woman was asking her husband not to hurt us and let us go. She was crying, but the policeman was unpersuadable, and we were returned to the stable, our prison. On return to the prison, we were punished (beaten with whips).
This was the end of our escape story.
Kaunas Jewish orphanage. Finally, somebody paid attention to us, Jewish children. That was the Red Cross. One morning, busses arrived and took us from Palanga to Kaunas. We were carried by young priests, probably ordinands. They brought food to us. I remember paper bags with pulled black bread, the busses were full of them. We ate to the full. The young priests were polite with us and quite attentive. However, they didn’t make do without accusations in respect of Jews, Communists and Bolsheviks.
As we were passing the centre of the city of Kretinga, which, as I remember, had been completely burnt down during the bombing, somebody of the priests accused our parents of what had happened. According to him, Communist Jews had bombed Kretinga, which caused a fire. It meant that it was Jews who were to blame for the burning of Kretinga. A priest simply said: ‘Look what you have done.’ Nowadays it sounds funny – we, Jewish children, were responsible for the bombing of Kretinga. At that time, it was considered to be an act of good taste to accuse a Jew of any actions, which certainly were bad and criminal.
We didn’t experience any more insults from the priests accompanying us.
The journey from Palanga to Kaunas got stuck in my memory, because the brusqueness of the words uttered by one of the priests accompanying us deeply hurt me. Why are we, Jewish teenagers, guilty of the burning of Kretinga? Are we really guilty and is it the reason why the brutal war is making us suffer so much? Certainly, Jews are always and everywhere at fault. But this is fierce anti-Semitism. Where is Christian love for the stranger, where is Christian impartiality, where is the truth which priests must preach to people? Where, where, why… Questions, questions… There were countless questions, and there was no answer.
In Kaunas, we were placed in the Vilijampolė Jewish orphanage until our parents or other relatives would be found. About 60 years have passed, but I’m still unable to watch calmly any TV reports about orphanages, shelters and the children growing up there. I’m unable to stay calm when seeing orphans. I pity them and I know from my own experience how much they miss parents, brothers, sisters, any relatives. I had such a feeling all the time while staying at the shelter.
As for the story of the Kaunas shelter for children, I remember only the general atmosphere of the orphanage and a few events which, in my opinion, were typical of that period.
Before getting onto the lists of orphanages, everybody had to be examined by a commission. The commission summoned each child separately from others. I went to the commission session wearing just my underpants. I had no other clothes. Dressed in such a manner, I went from Palanga to Kaunas, I had the same clothes on me for quite a while, and the reason was that in Palanga’s stable I was robbed. On waking up one morning, I didn’t find my upper clothes (I left some of my clothes at the seaside while going from Palanga to Šventoji on the first day of the war). On that night in the stable, I was sleeping in shorts, and this is what I preserved. That’s why I was standing half-dressed in front of the commission. They were very surprised by my appearance, and on hearing my surname they got completely confused. They, or some of them, knew the Kuklianskis name and knew my parents. As soon as they found out that the half-dressed boy standing in front of them was pharmacist Kuklianskis' younger son, I received the clothes of the orphanage.
The last episode which I’m going to talk about was the happiest and most important event in my life at that time. My mother found me and came to take me with her! There was a lot of joy and tears on both sides. On numerous occasions, me and other members of my family thought that we would hardly be able to find each other in the storm of the war, we knew nothing about each other, we didn’t know whether the others were still alive. Such a thinking at that time was realistic, rather than sentimental. So many people had already perished, so many had gone missing! It was just the beginning of the war, and nobody could tell when it would end...
My mother came to Kaunas in the company of a long-standing friend of our family Mockevičius. His conduct was nothing short of an act of heroism. To carry a Jew was dangerous, and much courage was needed to dare to do it.
Mother didn’t arrive from Alytus, where I had left to Palanga from and where we had lived before the war, but from my father’s home town of Veisiejai. Me and my mother, brought by Mockevičius, returned from Kaunas to Veisiejai via Simnas.
In August, we arrived with my mother to Veisiejai. In the family of Saulius and Zislė Kuklianski, this was a huge and the last happy occasion with all the members of our family still alive.
Since then, nothing good happened during the entire war, except for ill-fated misfortunes. There are all kind of situations in life. Natural disasters and other accidents beyond human control often cause losses among people. However, I don’t mean caprices of nature, but rather people's malice, which caused the loss of millions of lives.
Our family, just as all Lithuanian Jews, was yet to suffer numerous losses, including the largest sacrifice of our family – the loss of our dearly beloved mother and many subsequent misfortunes.
I wanted very much to be a pioneer...
I wanted very much to be a pioneer. I liked all the pioneers’ symbols and order, but after the Alytus City pioneer gathering held in the former officer club, I wasn’t among those admitted to pioneers.
All my classmates were admitted to pioneers, except me... I was deeply hurt, which made me very distressed, even though childishly, because to my understanding at that time, I was treated as second-rate non-proletarian children.
However, I was sent to Palanga’s pioneer camp, which seems to have been the first camp of this kind. This happened thanks to my parents’ efforts, because they paid for my stay there.
At the camp, everything was done according to pioneers’ discipline and symbols. Certainly, we were taught the ideas of Communism, although we understood them in a very simple or peculiar manner (bourgeois must be beaten, etc.).
I remember that at that time, Palanga was wooden (villas were small and wooden), and everything was done for children. It was almost impossible to see adult holiday-makers, because you couldn’t notice them among all those children.
The fact that on 22 June 1941, the Second World War caught me at the Palanga pioneer camp affected my entire subsequent life.
I was a child who had seen in his life nothing but good. I was suddenly separated from my family. Separation from my parents at the beginning of the war also determined the fate of the parents. They could have attempted to retreat to the East, but their choice was limited – I wasn’t with them. The parents didn’t dare to leave me to my fate in the storm of the war.
Such a decision implied that our family was to face certain death or at least a humiliation, major financial difficulties, and in general a beggarly life far from normal and respectable living conditions.
However, let’s go back to Palanga. We, boys from the 5th squad of the 5th pioneer camp were aroused from sleep by cannonade – gunshots, explosions, smoke. We have never experienced such a pounding, smoke and fire before, so we got very frightened, some of us, especially girls, were weeping.
I remember somebody saying that the outstanding Lithuanian poet Salomėja Nėris, in her poem “Mama, kur tu”(“Mom, where are you”), had invented the terrors of the outbreak of the war which horrified the children at the Palanga pioneer camp.
The talented poet didn’t put a single word wrong. Indeed, on 22 June 1941 I wanted to shout: ‘Mom, where are you!’ I believe that most of the children, when crying, were silently shouting for their mothers.
One needs to experience a situation as we were in on the first day of the war in Palanga to be able to understand how much we, children, needed our mothers and our parents in general, how much we wanted (in fact, desired!) their care. Salomėja Nėris' poetic intuition let her understand it. All honour to her!
Pioneer leaders told us to gather in the yard and from the yard they brought us to the seashore. They were leading us to Šventoji. The journey was tiring – sea sand, a suitcase with clothes which my mother gave me back in Alytus, heat of summer sunshine, sea wind, and we were with clothes. A long line of children was formed in a short while.
Soon you could see the bags left in sand by the children, they threw them away, because it was difficult to carry them. I didn’t throw my bag away.
This is how the human, especially child’s, psyche is configured. Objectively, the future meeting with a mother itself was more than just plausible. Some teenagers, especially those of the Jewish nationality, who managed to get in Šventoji onto the trucks waiting there and were evacuated to the East, returned in 1944-1945 to Lithuania and no longer saw their mothers and fathers, because they had been shot down. However, at that time I was afraid that my mother would scold me for not having preserved the bag.
When we got to Šventoji in the afternoon, there were no longer any vehicles which had been assigned for the evacuation of children. Those who arrived to Šventoji earlier were lucky, they managed to get onto the trucks which carried them to the East.
We were caught up with, or perhaps overtaken, by the German vanguard and on 23 June local white-banded Lithuanians brought us back by foot to Palanga.
We were given food, and assigned a room of the 5th squad at the former pioneer camp for sleeping. The next day, a major division of children according to nationalities was held. On that day, my distinctive feature was the Jewish nationality. While playing with children of the camp, I learnt that apart from Jewish children, there were also Lithuanians, Poles and Russians. That is all I knew about nationalities. Now we learnt officially that we were Jews and that we would be separated from children of other nationalities, because Jews were rascals, their parents are Communists, Bolsheviks and that is why Lithuania lost its independence.
We, former Jewish children of the Palanga pioneer camp, were separated and brought the synagogues located nearby (at the place of today’s main grocery store, close the marketplace). There we were imprisoned in the direct sense of the word – we were even provided with an armed guard. Adult Jews of Palanga (men) had already been brought here. Out of Palanga’s residents, I remember only elderly Jews. At the synagogue, there were neither women, nor girls from the pioneer camp.
We were kept at the synagogue for two-three days. The abuse which we experienced was terrible. The most important was that we weren’t allowed to go to the toilet, we were forced to relieve nature directly in the synagogue, in the porch. For us, children, it wasn’t very important where to pee, but for practising Jews it was terrible to defile a holy place – synagogue. I saw their suffering. The men avoided to relieve nature in the synagogue until the very last moment, as long as they could endure and even more. People were hitting their heads to the wall, hitting the door of the synagogue, hysterically crying and asking and demanding to allow them to go outside to relieve nature. Our guards were just laughing at what was going on, it was a theatre performance for them.
Let me put an emphasis on yet another cynical kind of treatment of the white-banded in our respect. Obviously, we were hungry, and our tormenters would give us salty salted fish, but measured water out in doses. We were suffering from thirst. Salty food and cold water caused more frequent and profusive urination, and we were forced to do it in the synagogue.
We slept on the floor and couldn’t even dream of bedclothes, bedclothes would be a real luxury, an unreal dream. But you are a Jew after all, everything is forbidden to you, so just be happy that you are alive. It doesn’t matter that you are only eleven years old, and that old Jew is in his 90s – death will make you equal, and you will get to heaven together for your suffering.
From the synagogue, we, the teenagers, were brought to the stable of the former Soviet border guard. Now I no longer remember whether we had to go by foot or we were brought there in carriages. As far as I can recollect, the stable of the border guard was located in the neighbourhood of Palanga – in Kunigiškės. There were no longer any horses in the stable, and on the floor there was pretty much straw spread. Here was our accommodation.
In the stable, the conditions were better than in the synagogue, but a stable remains a stable. Cattle may be kept there, but not humans, the more so teenagers and children. Our daily routine was rather simple. We used to be awaken early in the morning by a guardsman hitting his automatic rifle on the door of the stable. After washing ourselves a bit, we used to join a queue to get food.
For breakfast, we would be given a few boiled potatoes and a handful of putrid pickled cabbage. You would simply join your palms and you would be put half a ladle of putrid cabbage. That cabbage had probably been kept for the border guard since the previous year or even earlier. Normal people would not eat such cabbage. But we were very hungry, so we ate them.
I no longer remember what they used to give us for lunch and dinner, but we, children, were constantly hungry. That is why, seizing the right moment we used to steal food – butter from the kitchen where we made to work (we would steal butter and carry it simply in our palms). Seizing the right moment, we used to steal from Palanga’s locals potatoes boiled in their skins, which they used to give to pigs. Anything which was eatable was eaten. It is a miracle that we didn’t get the runs, that food wasn’t intended for people. A satisfied animal would turn away from such a food.
Some residents of Palanga, especially those who lived in the vicinity of our stable and whose houses or farms we used to pass when brought to work, sometimes supported us with a slice of bread or a potato. I don’t have any explicitly manifested scorn towards us, Jewish teenagers, stuck in my memory. I would have remembered it.
However, the violence and taunting of guardsmen (we were guarded by young armed white-banded men, some of the guards seem to have also had green armbands) still are and will remain etched in my memory. A few of the guardsmen could have been non-Lithuanian, but it was mostly young armed Lithuanians who guarded us, derided and brutalised us.
I will mention just one action of derision and violence organised by Palanga’s local auxiliary police (hilfpolizei) and the police chief. As far as I remember, the surname of the chief policeman of Palanga was Adomaitis. He was a middle-age man with a pointed beard.
One afternoon, or early evening, we, former pioneers, were brought to the former official building of the Soviet military garrison. A so-called ‘show’ was to be held there, namely, demonstration of burning of Communist books and a bonfire for Jewish pioneers.
The Jews brought to that place were made to carry portraits of Lenin and Stalin turned upside down. The portraits of Stalin and Lenin were full-size, the sight was quite impressive. The portraits of other Soviet leaders were shown at waist length, their carrying upside down wasn’t very impressive. Taller children were selected to carry the portraits of Soviet leaders, also the portraits of Stalin and Lenin.
We, most of the children, had to carry several books each. I understood that we were carrying thick and very heavy Communist books. We were lined-up as if for a demonstration: in the front, there were standing two taller children holding the portraits of Lenin and Stalin at full length upside down, behind them there were children with the portraits of Communist leaders, also upside down. We followed them, each carrying several books.
We were taken to the Ronžė River, where the portraits and books were to be burnt. In a word, there were books replacing the wood, and there was a pioneers’ bonfire. It was a nice idea, wasn’t it?
The children didn’t want to put the items which had been brought to the bonfire to replace wood. We were beaten with sticks and whips until the portraits and books were put to the fire. Having lit several bonfires, our tormenters made us dance. What is a bonfire without dances, what is a pioneers’ bonfire without them?
The sight was very impressive: it was getting dark, and on this background there were burning books, with pioneers dancing around the bonfire.
Such a sight could probably be captured in photographs. I don’t know and I don’t remember whether we were being photographed, though Hitlerites could have made good fun of such a photograph.
We were forced to go to work every day. We used to sweep streets, clean the rooms where off-duty German soldiers were staying, we also cleaned the empty Jewish apartments in the centre of Palanga. The majority of the Jewish apartments were located on the second floor of stone houses. At the first floor, there were usually the shops belonging to the Jews living on the second floor. The apartments and shops of Palanga’s Jews were in the centre of the city, on the street where the bus station, the post, the police office and the court are located today.
I saw no Jews in Palanga. I saw no women, no children, no old or young people. Palanga had been cleaned from Jews, except for us, some one hundred children, the former holiday-makers at a pioneer camp.
At that time, I didn’t understand, or didn’t think, where the owners of the Jewish apartments we were cleaning had disappeared.
The stable where we were kept was guarded by armed young Lithuanians. We were unable to leave the premises freely, we were constantly accompanied by the guardsmen. Such was the background of our imprisonment in Palanga, and its content was forced labour, derision, a corporal punishment for the smallest fault.
Nevertheless, I resolved to run away. The escape was childish, that’s why it was unsuccessful, it was doomed to failure.
We decided to run away together with a friend of mine, I remember neither his surname nor name, I only know that just as me, he was from Alytus.
We left the stable unnoticed and entered Žemaičių road in the direction of Kaunas. We knew the direction, and we escaped in the daytime. A short while after entering the road, we saw a farmstead – a house and outbuildings. We decided to come in and ask for food.
The owner of the house welcomed us quite nicely. We were seated at a table, she gave us bread and a glass of milk. She was talking with much compassion. Unfortunately, her husband arrived soon; he had a green armband. I understood that he was serving in the auxiliary police. The man didn’t object to giving food to us, but he decided to bring us back to the stable. The woman was asking her husband not to hurt us and let us go. She was crying, but the policeman was unpersuadable, and we were returned to the stable, our prison. On return to the prison, we were punished (beaten with whips).
This was the end of our escape story.
Kaunas Jewish orphanage. Finally, somebody paid attention to us, Jewish children. That was the Red Cross. One morning, busses arrived and took us from Palanga to Kaunas. We were carried by young priests, probably ordinands. They brought food to us. I remember paper bags with pulled black bread, the busses were full of them. We ate to the full. The young priests were polite with us and quite attentive. However, they didn’t make do without accusations in respect of Jews, Communists and Bolsheviks.
As we were passing the centre of the city of Kretinga, which, as I remember, had been completely burnt down during the bombing, somebody of the priests accused our parents of what had happened. According to him, Communist Jews had bombed Kretinga, which caused a fire. It meant that it was Jews who were to blame for the burning of Kretinga. A priest simply said: ‘Look what you have done.’ Nowadays it sounds funny – we, Jewish children, were responsible for the bombing of Kretinga. At that time, it was considered to be an act of good taste to accuse a Jew of any actions, which certainly were bad and criminal.
We didn’t experience any more insults from the priests accompanying us.
The journey from Palanga to Kaunas got stuck in my memory, because the brusqueness of the words uttered by one of the priests accompanying us deeply hurt me. Why are we, Jewish teenagers, guilty of the burning of Kretinga? Are we really guilty and is it the reason why the brutal war is making us suffer so much? Certainly, Jews are always and everywhere at fault. But this is fierce anti-Semitism. Where is Christian love for the stranger, where is Christian impartiality, where is the truth which priests must preach to people? Where, where, why… Questions, questions… There were countless questions, and there was no answer.
In Kaunas, we were placed in the Vilijampolė Jewish orphanage until our parents or other relatives would be found. About 60 years have passed, but I’m still unable to watch calmly any TV reports about orphanages, shelters and the children growing up there. I’m unable to stay calm when seeing orphans. I pity them and I know from my own experience how much they miss parents, brothers, sisters, any relatives. I had such a feeling all the time while staying at the shelter.
As for the story of the Kaunas shelter for children, I remember only the general atmosphere of the orphanage and a few events which, in my opinion, were typical of that period.
Before getting onto the lists of orphanages, everybody had to be examined by a commission. The commission summoned each child separately from others. I went to the commission session wearing just my underpants. I had no other clothes. Dressed in such a manner, I went from Palanga to Kaunas, I had the same clothes on me for quite a while, and the reason was that in Palanga’s stable I was robbed. On waking up one morning, I didn’t find my upper clothes (I left some of my clothes at the seaside while going from Palanga to Šventoji on the first day of the war). On that night in the stable, I was sleeping in shorts, and this is what I preserved. That’s why I was standing half-dressed in front of the commission. They were very surprised by my appearance, and on hearing my surname they got completely confused. They, or some of them, knew the Kuklianskis name and knew my parents. As soon as they found out that the half-dressed boy standing in front of them was pharmacist Kuklianskis' younger son, I received the clothes of the orphanage.
The last episode which I’m going to talk about was the happiest and most important event in my life at that time. My mother found me and came to take me with her! There was a lot of joy and tears on both sides. On numerous occasions, me and other members of my family thought that we would hardly be able to find each other in the storm of the war, we knew nothing about each other, we didn’t know whether the others were still alive. Such a thinking at that time was realistic, rather than sentimental. So many people had already perished, so many had gone missing! It was just the beginning of the war, and nobody could tell when it would end...
My mother came to Kaunas in the company of a long-standing friend of our family Mockevičius. His conduct was nothing short of an act of heroism. To carry a Jew was dangerous, and much courage was needed to dare to do it.
Mother didn’t arrive from Alytus, where I had left to Palanga from and where we had lived before the war, but from my father’s home town of Veisiejai. Me and my mother, brought by Mockevičius, returned from Kaunas to Veisiejai via Simnas.
In August, we arrived with my mother to Veisiejai. In the family of Saulius and Zislė Kuklianski, this was a huge and the last happy occasion with all the members of our family still alive.
Since then, nothing good happened during the entire war, except for ill-fated misfortunes. There are all kind of situations in life. Natural disasters and other accidents beyond human control often cause losses among people. However, I don’t mean caprices of nature, but rather people's malice, which caused the loss of millions of lives.
Our family, just as all Lithuanian Jews, was yet to suffer numerous losses, including the largest sacrifice of our family – the loss of our dearly beloved mother and many subsequent misfortunes.