The Man Who Bought a Horse

While we were in Pasvalys, Juozas Matulis (our grandfather's brother) told us a very interesting story that I'm not certain I'd ever heard before. There were several years that the family in Lithuania thought our grandfather was dead. He explained that not long after Vacys was taken by the Nazis, the family received word that (from a Lithuanian friend?) that he had been killed somewhere near Kaunas. And years passed before anything to the contrary came through. Juozas told us that it was in 1953 that the family received a letter postmarked from United States with a single sentence: "The man who bought a horse in [a specific year] is writing you a letter". They knew exactly what it meant - he had survived and made his way to America - but there was no way for the authorities to determine who it was.

The primary reason he had to flee was because the Soviets would have pegged him as an enemy. Despite being forced into labor by the Nazis, the Soviets would have made no distinction and deported him (and possibly the whole family) to Siberia. He couldn't go back or allow the Soviets to know he'd ever existed. It took him 5 entire years of living in the United States before he even decided to send that cryptic message. It had been about 10 since they'd seen him.

Here's a video of Juozas recounting the story for the camera. Unfortunately I can't (yet) understand it and translate here:

(Sorry for the bad audio, I accidentally deleted the second channel)

I know that he eventually was assured that it was safe to send communications because letters, postcards, and family photos were exchanged. But he lived under fear of the Soviets even 5000 miles away. His paranoia in later years is entirely understandable given these experiences.

I just wish he was still living so that I could get his recollection of the story. I may have even gotten pieces of it before, but without the bigger context, the fine details get lost. I recall clearly him talking about the brutality of the Nazis and the starvation conditions in which they were kept. And I remember him telling stories about sneaking out at night to steal food, in full knowledge that they'd be killed on the spot if they were caught. I wonder if he actually escaped for good, and engineered the whole story of his death to protect his family. Did he ask a friend to report to his family that he'd been killed? Where'd he go after that? And when did he decide that he would flee the approaching Soviets? Sadly, all the firsthand knowledge of this is now lost. I've got just one cassette of him talking, recorded by Nick, which might hold some clues. Now I've just got to find a tape deck!

This whole story, though, makes me wonder about močiute's brother Kazimieras. Her mother always believed that he was alive and would someday come find them. I always thought that belief was maintained because nobody ever got closure on his killing, but now I wonder, is there a chance he survived, assumed another identity, and never contacted the family for fear of putting them in danger? It's far-fetched and unlikely, but not impossible. If he didn't survive until independence, maybe it never would have been revealed.