At 7:30, dong, dong, dong, the bells chime.  Occasionally a car alarm goes off or a drill hums on the nearby construction site.  I walk along the river with twenty pounds of electronics weighing on my back to the Institute of Language and Literature.  Along the way I smile at an old street sweeper who wears thick glasses and a neon vest.  Each day, he sweeps.  Sometimes he looks up, but rarely smiles.  Smiling is not the old custom here.  Passer-byers rarely show teeth as they pass.

In an antique stone building, I participate in a fiction workshop with A. Sileka.  He is a tall, warm character with white hair and wise eyes.  An hour later I attend Travel Writing, with Laima Vince, a wonderful, eloquent woman who writes novels, poetry, and articles that center on Lithuanian culture.  She is from Lithuania, although, like many teachers at the Seminar, she either now lives in, or has once lived in North America.  Laima conducts the customary editing session the first half of class, and then during the second leads us to exotic places, like a cemetery, an old church, a university, and  a basement bakery.  I frequent the pastry shop at least two times a day where a dark woman sells strong cups of coffee.  Interspersed between workshops and photo-editing sessions are social events, readings, and late nights at a Writers’ Guild.  Here, in a gothic, dim room, students from Canada, the States, South Africa, Russia, and beyond surround thick, wooden tables, drinking mugs of light beer and small glasses of wine.

In her earlier days, Faye photographed musicians, including Aretha Franklin.  Since then she has received multiple masters degrees and two doctorates in the arts, administration, dance, Asian studies, and, the list goes on.  Her long, caramel hair is cut short on top.  Intricate silver bands wrap around her thin wrists.  She dresses in elegant dark prints and has a light voice that seems to hold endless lines of wisdom and surprise.  Her mother, who is now in her early nineties, and now deceased father were born in Vilnius.

Young women in green and white run behind the counter - “Café? Milke? Café? Ok?”
Scents of fried dough and strong coffee hang in the air of the small basement pastry shop.
Stationed between a circle of literary and arts institutes, the shop caters to herds of students, young and old, who pour into the tiny space in the beginning of the day.  “Coffee?  Coke?  What is that?” Foreigners intonate confections in a slow drawl - “C-a-n I H-a-v-e M-I-L-K in C-o-f-f-e-e?”
“Yes, yes,” a woman with a brown, bowl-cut hairdo shaped sleekly to her round face punches the keys of the register in a rapid motion - “Ok, yes, 5 litas.”

On a workshop outing, a man stumbles over to the back room.  A classmate offers him her seat.  He seems kind.  He wears a grey suit, white top, and brown loafers.  Balding white hair tops his pudgy face.  He mumbles something.
“What is he saying?” I turn to Laima Vince who speaks Lithuanian.
“I’m not going to bother listening.” She winks.  “He’s drunk.”

The items they leave behind

White flower encircle a strand of fake pine needles.  Bouquets of flowers in red and pink sit along a concrete bed.  A stone cross resembles a wooden trunk, deep with wounds.  A small silver frame holds the picture of a young woman in black and white.  Light curls are cropped closely to her plump face.  She looks to the side with a regal air.  Her worn stone grave reads Janina.  The head of a single red rose lies alone on the green patch before her plot.  In the Polish section of the cemetery, traditional stone emblems honor the long dead of the 19th Century.  Beyond the Polish section, a strip of purple flowers begins to wilt.  The relief of a Roman-like head protrudes from a massive cross.  Vines wrap around the man’s head, he gazes to the side solemnly.  On a crisp afternoon, grey clouds hover over Antalkali Cemetery.  The burial ground holds the remains of Lithuanians, Poles, and Soviets.  The atmosphere is still and the site is silent, but resounding in the stones are the stories of partisans, traitors, artists, and loved ones from centuries past.
Lithuanians care for the souls of their dead.  Families of the deceased have shipped the bones of their loved ones to this cemetery to nurture their spirits.  The community continues to memorialize the departed in public holidays, such as Old Saints Day, when family members light candles at the graves in a dark afternoon of tribute.

Consequently, woven into the site are contradictions.  Behind the 19th Century section, stands a memorial to Lithuanian partisans killed in protest against the Soviet’s, in an attempt to save a Vilnius T.V. tower that the communists intended to destroy.  A white marble cross marks the headstone of Lokfta Asanavicute, the sole female killed in the riot.   Little pink flowers line the stone bed before her grave.  At the furthest corner of the graveyard, six totem-like, long figures memorialize Soviet soldiers.   Bouquets scatter at their feet.  A boy in blue runs through their courtyard where a flame once observed their sacrifices.  Today the cold, lifeless base of the flame is empty.  The boy examines the large knotted ring of the iron foundation.  Dead flowers scatter around the square.  Stone relief sculptures of Soviet heads emerge from plaques in an adjacent section.  Their faces are stolid, imperial, and some would say, falsely idealized.  Flameless candles line their way.  The head of a Lithuanian traitor named Antanas Sniecks sits on a pedestal.  His face is cracking and stained in green rust, but his stare is steady - almost sincere.  Hidden far back, a row of rectangle graves represents Soviet soldiers and KGB workers killed during Soviet occupation of Lithuania.  Their memory is hidden for the USSR’s cause of might.  The plots span an overgrown field in a flawless, straight line.  Their beds are devoid of flowers, candles, or tokens of remembrance.

The artists are preserved with true symbols of solemnity and grace.  An elegant white stone sculpture looks over Arvydas Naujokaitis.  It is a memorial of white.  Infused in the white stone, the memorial candle and pale flowers is a peaceful commemoration.  Across the path, a wooden woman weeps.  Her long hands cover her chiseled face.  A ghoulish stone man with wide wings looks frightfully over a somber peasant woman.  A black piano marks Dainius Trinkunas.  His character comes to life in the marble white keys.

Within the Antalkalies Cemetery linger the courageous, the creative, the maternal, the strong, and the tyrants - the oppressors, feeble and cowardly.

Tucked away in a quiet area behind Gedimino Street, the KGB museum displays the gruesome history of Lithuanian occupation and the role of the secret police.  The first two floors compose of displays that illustrate the story through photographs, documents, dates and accounts of Soviet communist occupation.  Words stream down plexi-panels that hang before walls of images depicting deportation, partisan fighting, and prisoners.  A young woman sits transfixed by a collage of letters and photographs in a room where KGB Police once congregated.  Layers of script describe the turbulent time, beginning in 1938 with Polish occupation.  Then, in 1941 the Nazis captured Klaipeda, claiming the region under the rule of the third Reich.  They ruled until ‘44 when the Soviets seized power, beginning a time of repression through intimidation, imprisonment, censorship, deportation, nationalization, and the annexation of Lithuanian identity.  Lithuanians fought in a nine-year partisan war, but with no success.  In 1954 the Soviets claimed Lithuania, despite persistent resistance.  One of the strongest weapons were words, which they published in private prints, journals, and magazines.  It was not until 1990 that Lithuania gained independence from the Soviets.  On October 31, 1993 the final train of Russian troops left.

Within the walls of the original KGB headquarters now exhibit the remains - glasses, a matchbook, an embroidered handkerchief, a wool coat, an army uniform, and countless photographs.  One image of a Lithuanian freedom fighter holding a long rifle reveals a note scribbled on back - “For a lasting memory, Adelyte.  Your will recall me someday…when I am not in this world - Vytantas.”

I walk down to the basement where the original prisons remain.  The space is cool, damp, and jarring.  An inspection room where prisoners were first fingerprinted leads toward a dark closet where prisoners stood for hours before guards led them to small cells where metal cots and buckets appear in a display that recreates each scene with the atmosphere of sparseness.  Barbed-wire fences in an outdoor recreation area.  A volunteer sits in the final conserved prison.  She reads the paper, glancing upward every few minutes with a somber expression.  I walk through a room where prisoners were tortured with freezing showers and that is enough.  I am done.   I run toward the large wooden door that leads to the street that leads back to a peaceful, sun showered courtyard.

Saturday morning Faye, Mona and I walk to the only active synagogue in Vilnius to observe minion.  The other, once vibrant synagogue in town was destroyed during World War II.  It was a gorgeous, baroque edifice, dating back the 16th century.  The few lasting pieces of it were forgotten after the War.  There was no effort to preserve the remnants and now a kindergarten thrives in its place.

On Pylimo Street, the still preserved temple serves a small group of grey haired, Orthodox men.  We walk upstairs through off white walls to the second floor where a few women sit.  Two red haired women smile as we stride passed.  A lady wearing a pink hat sits on the opposite side and one other woman follows behind us.  We sit on an ancient wood bench.  It is so delicate, it feels as if it could break beneath our small bodies.  The sound of prayer echoes through the large room.  The women watch below where a rabbi reads the Torah in a fast and fluid pace.  Men set blue bibles on wood stands and assemble in the benches, heads lowered in prayer.  Blue, pink, and bronze circular designs line the walls and ceiling.  Dust waves in the light that flows through the windows.  I open a bible that reads in Hebrew on the right, Russian on the left.

“There are barely enough people for a minion here,” Faye comments when we leave.  A black gate surrounds the building.  It is stunning.  Set in the pale concrete façade, linear indents run along ornate windows with star-like shapes.  Blue Hebrew letters read beneath a long window that reflect the blue tones in the sky.  A piece of the torah appears in stone on top of the building.  Outside, a small plaque describes the history of the synagogue in brief.
A man in white wears a yamukah.
“Where you are from?” he asks in a thick accent.
“Philadelphia.”
“Ohhh!.”  He grins.

The morning begins with a weighted walk.  Through the Pines of Paneriai, a light haired woman leads a tour of the site where seventy thousand Jews were killed.  The air feels cool.  The trees are full and green.  A man pushes a red stroller through the fields where hoards or Jews were packed in lorries, driven from the ghetto, murdered, and then burned to erase the remains.  The Nazis succeeded, with the exception of the very few that escapes to Belarus by running through secret passages thirty kilometers to the border.  The bodies of the dead were disposed of in large trenches.  In all, over 200,000 Lithuanian Jews were killed.  Presently, only seven thousand or so live in Lithuania.
This morning, the forest is tranquil.
“Now this is the Jewish Ghetto.” The guide points to a stone plaque on the exterior wall of a concrete building in the small curving city street.  “There was a large part to the ghetto and a small part.”  We ride through thin stone streets situated not far from the convent.
“This was the market area.”  She points to a street sign.  “You see, Stikliu Street?  Stikliu means glass - there were prominent glass makers who sold their wares here.”  I imagine dark clothed people wearing wire glasses and button down dress shirts, selling their goods in the tiny corridor.  We pass the Museum of Jewish Tolerance as they mini-bus departs the city center.  Large billboards feature attractive blonde women.  Just passed the suburban landscape, the bus winds through a forest.  A stone sign serves as a memorial at the entrance point.

“You see,” the guide notes, “the early version in Lithuanian does not specifically read ‘Jews’ in its description of the massacre.  The top piece in Hebrew does mention the Jews specifically.  It was added at a later time.”  She leads us down a path that trails to memorials, burial sites, and expansive fields where the genocide took place.  Faye says a beautiful prayer in Hebrew at a tall memorial.  She weeps loudly.  Her entire family, but for her mother and father, died in the Holocaust.  Her cries ring through the words.  The air feels colder.

Once back in the city, we decompress over salads and coffee.
“You are such a wealth of experience,” I say to Faye.  Her father was a scholar.  He spoke over twenty languages.  Just before WWII began, he left Lithuania in his early twenties for Moscow, where the university offered him a position to work toward a doctorate.  Faye’s mother joined him.  She told no one about her plans to move, not even her family.  This is why they survived.  The two were arrested in Russia, not because there were Jewish, but because the NKGB, internal secret police, suspected her father for espionage.  The two were sent to the Gulag, a Russian prison, as political prisoners.  Since her father knew about twenty-two languages, the police used him to translate propaganda notes that were scrawled in various languages.  Although they were confined to the women’s and the men’s quarters, her mother and father were sent to the same prison site.  The Jewish Underground helped them to escape to New York City where her father worked as a scholar at the YIVO - Jewish Research Institute.  He devoted his life to writing material about Jewish life.  In New York, he produced a book that celebrates the life of Lithuanian Jews through photographs and text depicting scenes before the War.  The piece now resides in the home of Dovid Katz in Vilnius.
“Thank you.” Faye smiles. “But I am not that much of a scholar - It is Dovid who really know his history.  He is a true scholar.”  Dovid Katz divides his year between Lithuania and Whales.  He was born in Brooklyn and has a strong New York accent.  His clothes are dark and his beard is long, unruly and black.  Hidden beneath the hair are thin-rimmed silver glasses.

The following night Dovid hosts a small gathering.  “Bring your friend,” he tells Faye, and so I go, along with Mona and Ken, a writer from the States.  We take a cab to his old, rust-stained apartment building and walk up four flights of stairs through a low-lit, yellow hallway.  An old woman greets us at the door in Lithuanian.  She hangs up our coats and leads us toward the living room where a thin, platinum blonde girl with frizzy curls asks for our drink requests.  Beneath the window, a scrumptious spread is laid out - bowls of cashews, trail mix, cookies, chocolate, and an array of brown liquors, vodka, and wine.
“Get her Glen Mills!” Dovid orders the blonde woman when I ask for whiskey, “One for Julia and one for me!  On ice!”  The girl pours large glasses of brown liquor for Dovid throughout the evening.  I gab with diplomats, working in the ambassador’s office to Canada, Ireland, and Belarus.  The apartment smells of the musty, old thick books that line the shelves in the large rooms.  Huge, crackling editions that seem to date back centuries surround the rooms.  Old photographs hang on the white walls, along with a reproduction of a yellow toned Chagall painting, which is hoisted high about the crowd.
“This is my fathers book!”  Faye shows me a volume from the shelf.  It is a beautifully crafted hardcover crimson book.  On the cover appears a city scene engraved in gold.  The inside pages feature whimsical montages, including scenes of old Jewish life, stamps, and letters.
“He was so creative,” Faye looks through the book fondly.  “I want to get this published now, it’s so important to me.”
The Canadian ambassador walks into the cool room.
“What would you like to drink?” Dovid comes in and calls the blonde woman over.
“Just water Dovid - really - that’s all I need,” the Ambassador says kindly.  “I don’t drink,” he admits to me with a laugh.
“Ahhh, It’s harder not to drink here that it is to not eat meat,” I joke.
“Absolutely!”
We discuss his job as a diplomat in Vilnius.  He has lived in Vilnius two years now.  Previously he worked in multiple cities, including Bogotá, Columbia and much of Europe.  His success as a diplomat he says, “…is in large part due to his ability to listen.”  He is a true gentleman.  As the evening closes, he offers us four - Faye, Mona, Ken, and myself - a ride back to the city center.

A troop of soldiers walk down the street, passed the convent.  Guns in hand, camouflage caps and brown uniforms — they march in groups of three.

In a grand room with colorful walls, filled with smirking plaster heads and crystal chandeliers, a poet reads.  His hands wave emphatically.  He passes forward and back, while he provides history, reasoning, anecdotes, and meaning to the words that read like music notes.  He is melodic in pace and eloquent in speech.  The room is sweltering.  The audience watches silently with moist faces and sticky skin.  The poet is from Jerusalem.  He recounts text influenced by Israel, America, and the bible.

In the evening, jazz music plays in an outdoor café.  A long legged musician croons the Lithuanian blues.  Men and women swing around the stone dance floor, spinning, spinning, a man with long curly hair leads a free flowing spin.
Faye leaves in just two days.  She will fly back to Soho while her teenage daughter, Davy, works with doctors in India.
“Jazz,” Faye exclaims, “that’s what we’re going to hear on my last night!”

Julia Blaukopf
Artist & Photographer
Julia@JuliaBlaukopf.com
610.306.5553