The Shadow of Death: The Holocaust in Lithuania

2. The Russian Invasion

2. The Russian Invasion One Saturday afternoon-it was in June 1940-we were going for a walk as usual down the main street of Kovno when suddenly we heard loud noises. From all sides there appeared military tanks. They came across the two bridges over the rivers, moving fast. They were closed so we couldn't see anyone. We thought the Germans were coming. We didn't know what was happening. We knew, from the newspapers and the radio, that the Germans were trying to take over all of Europe. They had taken Poland, France, everybody, so we thought these were Germans. Right away panic started. People were running into their homes to hide, especially the Jewish population, because we had heard, we knew, what they were doing in the other countries-they were coming in and sending Jews to ghettos, to concentration camps. We thought that ifthey were coming, that was what they were going to do with us, too. After all, we Lithuanian Jews were no better than any other Jewish population. But as the tanks slowed down and we looked more carefully out our windows , we saw the red stars and knew these were not the Germans but the Russians. Suddenly our mood changed. Instead of panic, we felt an unnaturaljoy. Everyone started hugging and kissingeach other, family and neighbors, as if the Messiah had just arrived. Although we didn't know ityet, we were lyingbetweentwo hungry animals, but the Germans were the worse ofthe two. Those who had been hiding ran out of their houses and began throwing 10 I Fort -:~; Maistas~ Kovno and its suburbs The Shadow of Death to Vilna and Dvinsk m Kavno city centre ~ Kovnosuburbs mile kilometres 1.15 bouquets of flowers at the approaching army. At any moment, the Germans could have swallowed us up, but here, suddenly, there was a miracle. The Red Army was marching into Lithuania . From the tanks the Red Army soldiers were throwing out Russian cigarettes, chocolate and other candy. When they passed little children in buggies, they jumped offthe tanks and ran up to ask the parents for their names and address so they could take the children for rides on the tanks, bringing them back in the evening. The streets were filled with people, young and old, running to see the Red Army. Then the real thing began: the foot soldiers came marching in, and buggies, each The Russian Invasion 11 pulled by four horses and with two soldiers and a machine gun on top. Always one ofthe soldiers played a harmonica while the second drove the horses and sang. No army in the world could play and sing and dance like the Russian army. The singing was so beautiful that many people ofthe town stayed outside day and night to watch and listen, sleeping in the street with little children who didn't think about eating, drinking, or sleeping. I stayed in the streets, too. My mother tried to persuade me to come home. "Let's go home and eat," she would say as she pulled on my arm. "You can't stay here all the time and not eat anything . You will have enough times to go hungry." I would tear away from her to run to a different place where she couldn't find me. She didn't want to run after me so she went home and made me some sandwiches and broughtthem to me to eat in the street. Since I was hungry I became better behaved and more appreciative . Still, as I stuffed my sandwich in my mouth, I had ears and eyes only for the Red Army, to hear their music and see them dance. Running back and forth, I must have looked like Charlie Chaplin working on the assembly line in a scene from Modern Times. The Lithuanian police from the old democratic republic, dressed in their blue coats with gold buttons and their round caps with white plumes, were still at their posts as the Russian army poured in. They were very demoralized. They knew their country was being taken over, yet they still had to try to keep order. It took a week ofmarching day and night for the army to move through the town. During this time the young Communists , some of them Jewish, had quite a celebration. They insulted the Lithuanian police, laughed about the president, Antanas Smetona, who...