Related by Marriage: Necessity

Lithuania, like other European countries at the turn of the twentieth century, had a class structure that made it difficult for persons to move beyond the station in life into which they had been born. If an unmarried domestic, for example, had a child, that child grew up with a "bastard servant stigma," and that stigma clung to the child even if he studied abroad and returned home with advanced degrees.

Less severe, but nonetheless rigid, lines separated other groups. Many of the Displaced Persons who traveled to the United States in 1948 and 1949 as part of the second wave of immigration were educated members of the middle class—that is, exactly the "bourgeois" that the Soviets targeted for deportations to Siberia. These were not people who lived in the hinterland and wore babushkas.

Some Displaced Persons who emigrated to the West in the late 1940s looked down upon those who had left Lithuania as "first wavers," namely before the World War I. There was even a saying: "men move to America for one of two reasons: (1) they got a girl pregnant; or (2) they're dodging the [Russian Imperial Army] draft."

The DPs had been compelled to leave their homeland, and they could not digest what circumstances would prompt a person to emigrate—willfully—from Lithuania.

This assessment overlooks the reality that befell many people living in an agrarian country. The Russian Empire exported the best Lithuanian produce (bacon, dairy, and geese) to Russia, and it paid the farmers little for the goods. Many first wavers, like Mr. Irene's maternal Grandparents, Anna and Stanley, emigrated to America to improve their families' financial futures. Anna and her sister, Petra, for example, worked to send money home to their Parents and two Sisters. Early photos of Anna show her uniformed as a domestic.

Occasionally, first wavers went back to Lithuania. Stanley's own Father, Frank, at some point must have decided he had made enough money in America, and he returned home. Other first wavers returned to Lithuania after February 16, 1918, when Russia lost control of the small country. I have a relative, for example, who was born in Chicago right around 1918. His Parents took him back to Lithuania so that he could grow up in the independent country. On July 31, 1944, he joined the other refugees fleeing the Soviet Occupation, and he, too, landed in a Displaced Persons camp.

Bridgeport, Chicago, about 1914. The shortest woman, on the far right, is Mr. Irene's maternal Grandmother, Anna. Her sister, Petra, stands in the middle, and a cousin is on the far left. The two sisters wear crosses; the cousin has a locket.

*     *     *     *     *

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, about 1910. Mr. Irene's Mom simply described this photo as follows: "This is the family with whom Grandma lived for five years."