On my visit back home to New York, I had planned to continue gathering information from Chute about the family and her experiences fleeing from Lithuania at the tail-end of WWII. Unfortunately, this is getting considerably more difficult as her hearing, memory, and English are declining. She's still doing quite well for somebody who is nearly 93, but it's a challenge to get much detail from her. I had hoped to make a recording of her experiences in the displaced persons camps after the war for a project at the
Balzekas Museum, but I didn't get much more than a few disjointed stories (something about a pig on the second floor of a house!).
At times, though, she had real clarity. As I mentioned
previously, I also planned to help her make a request to the
Lietuvos Ypatingasis Archyvas for information about her brother. They have researchers that can search archives for information about Lithuanians that were deported and/or killed under Soviet rule. They just need requests in writing and documents proving family relation. I was a little bit worried that it would all be too complicated to explain what we needed for her to write, but I was pleasantly surprised that she had almost no difficulty at all. I explained that she needed to write a letter requesting the information and, without missing a beat, she picked up a pen and started to write. My uncle Mike was there to help and to confirm she was writing something that made sense. I think we weren't giving her enough credit because she wrote more detail than she probably even needed to.
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| Written by Chute |
In addition to the request, we needed to provide documents showing that we are connected to her brother - they won't release personal information otherwise. Fortunately, Mike was able to dig up Chute's marriage certificate showing her maiden name. I had never seen it before, and it was key for proving the connection. I've sent all of these things over to the archive and, hopefully, we'll hear something back soon.
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| Marriage Certificate |
Also significant on this document is the name of the camp they were in, in Germany. I had asked Chute about this several times previously, but she was never able to recall the name. It was called Wolterdingen. All I had been able to get from her before was that her first husband, Vytautas Apanavicius, had died near Munich, so I knew she had been there, at least briefly. There appears to be (at least) two different Wolterdingens, however - one in the Black Forest region and one near Soltau - neither of which is that close to Munich. I couldn't be sure where they were for most of the approximately 3 years that they remained in Germany. But now I at least have somewhere to start.
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| Wolterdingen, Germany |
One of the Wolterdingens, though, is not far from the infamous Bergen-Belsen camp where Anne Frank died. Which is where
Ronnie told me Kazimiras and Sofija/Zose (Chute's parents) had been. I suspected previously that Chute was traveling with her first husband's family, but perhaps she was relocated to the camp her parents were in after he died. Or maybe they were all transferred. There must be records of this somewhere. Perhaps somebody at the Balzekas museum will be able to help.
I also showed Chute one of the
photos from Ronnie to see if she might recognize her father among the miners. She didn't. But that's not to say it's definitely not him. The image I had was grainy. I'll need to get a clearer copy and then maybe try to compare it to some of the photos I do have of him.
I showed Chute some of the photos I took in Lithuania too. I had hoped she'd recognize some of the landmarks and it would stir up fond memories. One of the things she identified was the Šeimena river that runs through Vilkaviškis which, she said, "was full of leeches". Not exactly the reaction I was going for.
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| Šeimena River |
The leeches, however, were better than the other memory that one of my photos elicited. I showed her the Kaunas funicular rail car, which Arunas told me was about 90 years old. She didn't recognize it right away, but once I explained what it was she remembered. Then she told me that was where the Soviets held public hangings of political dissidents. Again, not the intended effect.
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| Kaunas Funicular |
Apart from these unintentional forays, it was just really nice to see Chute. She's quite a character these days. For example, on occasion in the past, when switching between languages, she'd accidentally say something to me in Lithuanian. She usually found this quite funny and then repeated it in English. This time, however, when Mike pointed out that I couldn't understand anything she was saying, she simply shrugged her shoulders and said back to him "he'll learn". She seems to have developed a feisty sense of humor. She also loves recalling funny stories, like the time I got sick from eating too many tomatoes from their garden. I've heard that story about 100 times, but she laughs like it was the first every time, and I enjoy that. It's just nice to get the chance to be there with her.
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