My First Trip to Lithuania - Summer 1978
by Dr. Giedrė Maria Kumpikas (former Hicksville High School teacher)
Lithuania had been shut off from the Western world since the summer of 1944. My parents had fled the oncoming Russians, barely eluding them by twenty kilometers and avoiding deportation and death in the Stalinist Labor camps in Siberia.
Many years passed. First, five years as refugees in Germany; then almost thirty years as immigrants in New York. Life had been hard for my parents. They had lost their country, their relatives, their honored position in society, and had become factory workers. My mother, due to her linguistic ability, learned English quickly and was able to obtain an office job, later a job as an artist coloring photographs. Many, however, remained factory workers, although most had university degrees. Throughout these years, we progressed ever so slowly and finally bought a house in the suburbs, then nine years later, we upgraded to a better one. I graduated from college and even earned a PhD.
The memory of Lithuania, fleeing the Russians, was an ever-present factor to my parents and passed on to me as well. Lithuania! Where was it? It had actually been eradicated from the world map, yet I knew it existed, although now it was called the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic. A Republic? Hardly. People could not leave; they could not write to anyone in the West, could not attend Church for fear of reprisals; lines for food and other daily necessities were long, and it was uncertain as to whether the staples would be there when your turn came.
In New York, social groups were formed, young people went to dances, and even traveled to Boston, Philadelphia, and Cleveland for a Saturday night dance. The desire to cling to one’s roots was strong.
Nevertheless, the yearning to see one’s Native land never faded. Hardly anyone had been able to travel into the Soviet bloc while Stalin was alive, except some very left-leaning people, who were suspected of being “sympathetic” to the Soviet regime. I had always found it ironic that these sympathizers had chosen to flee rather than stay, but here they were, safe in America, the land of the free, and yet spouting their Communist philosophy.
However, upon Stalin’s death in 1953, people were finally able to correspond. When my mother received her first letter from her oldest sister Julia, who had remained in Lithuania and had not been deported like her other sister, she was overwhelmed to read that her mother, my beloved grandmother, had died, and she had not known when, neither the month, nor the year. My mother cried quietly and bitterly at the political cruelty of heartless leaders who cared little for humanity.
With Khrushchev, the situation became more relaxed and, in 1978, I began to toy with the idea of going to visit my Native country. I did not want to go with a tour, because they were very regulated, so I ventured to apply for a visa with the then Russian Intourist Agency. To my surprise, I was granted a five-day visa to enter either from Poland or Russia. From Russia, oh no! I chose to travel to Lithuania from Poland by train after flying from Paris to Warsaw.
Warsaw! I had a first cousin in suburban Warsaw whom I had not seen since I was three years old. She had been corresponding with my mother over several years, since Poland was less restricted. So, upon my arrival, she and her husband met me at the airport in Warsaw. I also met an American college professor who invited me to a cocktail party that evening at a rich Polish businessman’s home.
My cousin and her husband lived on the fifth floor of a typical Soviet project-type building. It was uniform like all the others, unidentifiable from the outside by any architectural characteristics. A piece of cement block - gray and dreary. The steps were of cement; the railings were iron bars. It had a creaky elevator which smelled slightly of urine. My cousin had a pretty apartment, light and airy, decorated mostly in brown - an oriental pattern brown rug, brown bulky furniture which seemed incongruous in a small space, and brown patterned wallpaper with light beige flowers. I asked her about the color scheme. Why was everything shades of brown? She answered that that was what Moscow had approved, and so nothing else was available.
My cousin gave me a ruby ring, which she said our grandmother had given her to give me if she ever saw me again. I cried.
That evening, I had agreed to go to the reception with the college professor I had met at the airport. He seemed respectable. We drove by taxi into the center of Warsaw. What a difference in the building! It was not by Western standards grandiose, but one could see it was one of the old stately houses in a former affluent area. The apartment was tastefully furnished, no brown tones. The guests were well-dressed; the women elegant, the clothes were Western. I had just come from Paris, so they seemed to be approving. Everyone spoke English; the liquor was imported. Apparently, the host was a wealthy businessman who had a famous jelly donut business. It was a cultured and polite evening.
When we left the party, my escort suddenly announced that he would not accompany me to my cousin’s home due to jet lag! I had made a mistake of not taking any money with me, so he gave me an amount he thought sufficient for the taxi ride and left me. The taxi driver drove around the outer suburbs for quite a while looking for my cousin’s building, but since they all looked alike, he finally ordered me out of the taxi and took off! It was two o’clock in the morning! I was alone in the middle of dark buildings, in a foreign country. I did not speak Polish. I did not know where to go or in which direction to turn. I calmed myself down as best I could, telling myself that I was an American and that I would find a solution. Then I saw a man walking carrying a briefcase. Well, I thought, he must be a serious man, because he has a briefcase. I ran over to him and began showing him the address on a piece of paper, speaking in every language I knew. He was quite astonished at seeing a well-dressed young woman all alone at such an hour, but he was polite and began to walk around with me, looking for the building in question. After a fruitless effort, he saw another man with a briefcase. He went up to him; they consulted with each other and apparently clarified the mystery of where my building was, and the first man walked me to the right building. I recognized the entrance and thanked him profusely. He, like a true Polish gentleman, kissed my hand and said Good Night.
