Them

by Auriol Reddaway (United Kingdom (Great Britain))

I didn't expect to find Lithuania

I am eighteen years old. I sit, shivering, in a rickety train heading out of Vilnius. My destination is Paneriai, where during World War Two 100,000 people, mainly Jews, were murdered. I step out with a few others, mostly old women with colourful bundles from the capital, and we pick our way across the tracks towards the road. There is one modest sign pointing me into the woods. I cannot help but imagine doing this in ragged clothes, bare feet crunching in the snow, knowing you’re walking to your death. A large rock, embossed like a headstone, sits on the edge of the forest and welcomes me to Paneriai. Behind it, there is a one room museum, shut and barred. And to my left a range of scattered monuments, varying so much in size, shape and language it is as if they are commemorating different events. I’m disappointed, whatever I expected to feel isn’t coming. Then I feel ashamed, what kind of morbid hearse-chasing tourist have I become? Seeking out sites of mass murder so I can be moved by them. I see a sign for further monuments and gloomily trudge in that direction. Here, like a punch to the gut, is the heartbreak. A series of huge pits pockmark the forest. This is the execution site. I stand, shocked and overwhelmed. Suddenly, breaking the silence is a child’s shout. A group of young children rush towards me. They are laughing, playing, jumping in the spring forest. Their parents follow, barely watching as their children dive into the nearest pit and begin to throw leaves at each other. The parents are laughing too, as the children run up and down the slopes of these pits where only decades before 100,000 people were shot and burnt. I consider intervening, and then think twice. After all, it is not my story. I am not Lithuanian and I didn’t lose anyone in this place. Perhaps they did, I’m sure many locals did. Then I hear their accents. These tourists with their picnic baskets and rowdy children are American. It is no more their history than it is mine and they have travelled a long way to play and picnic over the dead. It is later in the week, and I am telling this story in a hostel kitchen in Kaunas, the second largest city in Lithuania. My audience is my new friend Joe, who is Jewish and doesn’t believe in shoes. He is shocked by the attitude of these tourists. We talk about this country and how we expected it to be shrouded in shame and in a post-Soviet identity crisis. This is not that country. Lithuania wears its turbulent 20th century on its sleeve. Every town has a statue to a war hero, every street has a plaque with a harrowing statistic and Paneriai is just one of the many death sites which dot the countryside. An older Lithuanian woman clumps up to us. She has earlier cornered me to tell me she is in the city to find a husband and will not leave without one. She also has the largest feet of anyone I have ever met, before or since. “Are you talking about the Holocaust?” We nod, and I begin my story again. She interrupts. “The Holocaust is everywhere. You can’t turn on the radio or the TV without seeing the Holocaust.” We agree it seems to be a popular topic and wonder why that might be. “My people suffered too,” she says. “Why aren’t we talking about that?” It is an interesting point. Joe and I begin to discuss the different attitudes to those who have suffered. She is growing increasingly agitated as we talk, until she bursts out: “We should have killed them all when we had the chance.” “Them.” Joe with his bare feet and his mandolin and his nervous smile. “Them.” Most of the murders at Paneriai were carried out by enthusiastic Lithuanian volunteer groups. “Them.” The Soviet regime denied the massacre of Jews at Paneriai and focussed instead on commemorating the Soviet victims. “Them.” The Lithuanian government is trying to undo the damage of decades of lies. But is it working?