Dirva = Field. [volume] (Cleveland, Ohio) 1915-current, 1948-04-02
Latest News From Lithuania

Continued from last edition)
Mrs. M. is very reticent about
how she was able to escape from the
camp. She is sure that the NKVD
may somehow get at her even in a
free country and certainly will seize
the kind people, an NKVD man
among them, who helped her to get
out. She only says that the thing
was possible after endless "combina-
tions" and that she travelled to
Leningrad in an empty and locked
cattle-wagon which had brought so
many prisoners to Medvezhegorsk.
Back in Lithuania in April 1916,
she found her children, Edward, now
fourteen, and Rosemarie, four, alive
and well. The children had stayed
behind with their grandmother, who
had endless difficulties in providing
for them as the families property
was confiscated when Mrs. M. was
arrested. They are all in Sweden
now, including the grandmother, and
little Rosemarie sits on her mothers
knee while we talk. She is fair
haired and blue-eyed and as pretty
as a picture, but pitifully serious
and thoughtful. A chocolate is re-
ceived politely but eyed with dis
hn 10
seen anything Of the kind in her life.
To the question how things lock
IN Lithuania, Mrs. M. replies that
life is not worth living there with
out Lithuanians. The country is
flooded with Russians. Most of them
have settled down in the towns oc-
cupying all the more important ad-
illustrative positions and the best
houses, but there are plenty even in
the country, the farms and lands Of
the deported Lithuanians being given
to Russian colonists. The real and
only scourge of the country are the
Russian beggars and spectators,
incredibly ragged and emaciated in
dividuals who come to Lithuania in
search of food from as far as Va
LIKE Luki, Kalinin, Leningrad, and
even Moscow. The people call them
"the black cats" for at night they
"niauw" at the doors and windows
of the farmers, until the people take
pity on them and his family and let
them in from the cold, whereupon
they often strangle the farmer and
his family with a special moose they
carry with them and then proceed
to rob and pillage. Sometimes they
lurk in the yard at nightfall wait
ing for somebody to come out, and
strangle him and those who sub
sequently come to look for him and
thus gaining admittance. Many of
the farms have been depopulated by
these "black cats" in one way or
another. Sometimes they set fire
to the buildings if they are refused
admittance and the people are NOR
tally afraid of them.
People are arrested every day for
no visible reason, the prisons are full
to overflowing, but Mrs. M. knows of
no slave labor camps for Lithua-
nian in the territory of Lithuania -
they are all taken to Russia.
No reconstruction work is being
done in Lithuania, the country is in
precisely the same ruined condition
as at the close of the war. The
only thing the Russians are inter-
asted in is traffic and the railway
stations have been repaired when and
where necessary. Some building ac-
,ivity is going on in the town of
Vilnius (Vilno), German POWs sup
olying the necessary labor. The
output Of the existing factories goes
% Russia in it's entirety and the
factories themselves are successive
v dismantled and taken to Russia.
The people have seen no consumer
goods for years, the only imports
rom Russia are red canvas for de-
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