August 14, 1944
My people, my people.
They are pushing what they can through the weathered slats of the train car, which hisses and sighs as if succumbed by the great burden of its cargo. This mass of young men, calling to their wives and reaching for the chubby hands of their children, tossing down damp letters and leather wristwatches and wedding bands from their breast pockets. The distraught people on the platform raise fisted hands bearing what offerings they could carry - wax-papered parcels, dried meats, preserves, bread; crumpled wads of rubles and rosaries bundled up in spare sweaters.
The Soviets do nothing; bargains are always welcome. Their possessions will be thieved away at the nearest opportunity.
One young woman strains to pass forward her tribute, and a pitying supervisor lifts her up by the hips; callused, blackened fingers curl around a gold-engraved compass, and I can barely make out the words above the chaos of the station: "kur esate, aš būsiu." The doomed man's hand threads through her hair, and I must look away then, because it is all at once a raw and forsaken intimacy.
It is the exchange of the dead and the dying.
Even the village beggar has arrived to offer up a day's work: a basket of stale bread and spoiled fruits and vegetable scraps. He fumbles about in his blindness, weeping as he cries out. "These poor men are going to see far more hunger than I ever will."
They call them "pseudo-Americans". These forcefully conscripted ranks of men possess such anti-Bolshevik sentiment that they have recently taken to flighting away from the Soviet Army at every given opportunity. Even sent to the front lines unarmed, the collection of such units has become so bothersome in recent months that the Reds have found considerable convenience in deporting them to the Siberian tundra.
And I stand here, a spectator paralysed by agony. I do not feel the tears until they are dripping onto my collar. The sensation of muscle being torn away from bone is not unexpected; this terror began in the summer of 1941.
I leave the station then, and vomit in the undergrowth. The United States and Great Britain signed the Atlantic Charter three years ago on this very date, but we remain here, in the abandoned vestige of the world.
We are forgotten.
Lietuvos.
I'm about to ruin myself with Lithuanian phrases. If the gender/grammar is wrong please tell me.
I originally posted this around June 14th last year, marking the 75th anniversary of the initial deportations of Baltic citizens to isolation in remote territories of the Union. The deportations, from 1941 to 1952, would amount to over 129,000 in Lithuania alone. This was especially heart-rending because tradition had it that a family could not be at rest with the death of a member until the body had been given a proper burial, and most exiled citizens died in the wilderness - never to be returned to their homeland.
My dates aren't going to be pinpoint because nothing is pinpoint in history. The deportations of Lithuanian soldiers did not begin until the spring of 1945 (conscription into the Soviet army, however, began much sooner. And they clearly learned their lesson the first time around because by the mid-40s most young men were sent to labour camps instead of the front).
The Atlantic Charter, signed August 14, 1941 by the U.S. and Great Britain, promised to bring about the reinstated sovereignty of occupied nations in the event of Allied post-war victory. Which went down real swell. The Lithuanian partisans regarded this document with utmost importance, as it (superficially) validated their right to the reinstatement of Lithuania's independence.
America (we can all reasonably assume this was America's doing here), in its usual euphoric manner, made a promise that was too great to maintain.