A Closer Look (Part 76)

Bridgeport, Chicago, Illinois, 1914. This is Mr. Irene's maternal Grandmother, Anna.

Here's the original post.

A Closer Look (Part 10)

Bridgeport, Chicago, about 1914. This is Mr. Irene's maternal Grandmother, Anna. Anna's oldest child, Martha, looked a lot like Anna. (Here's the original post.)

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."

Related by Marriage: Assimilating and Eligible

Imagine the mechanics that were necessary to maintain a waist so cinched. The elaborate Gibson-Girl coiffures appear equally complicated.

Bridgeport, Chicago, Illinois, 1914. Mr. Irene's maternal Grandmother, Anna—on the right—stands with her cousin. This photo was taken about four years after Anna emigrated to the United States and three years before she married.

Bewitched

In the 1930s, my Mom's maternal aunt, Dora, adopted the glamorous look that came into fashion on the eve of World War II. Think Marlene Dietrich with auburn hair.

The first stories I heard about Dora pivot on her forward-looking viewpoint. More provincially wired people found her views and behaviors scandalous. Others recognized that Dora simply was born about sixty years too early.

Despite Dora's progressive nature, she did not get out of Lithuania after the Soviets occupied the country in 1944. Many relatives fled in July 1944. We are not sure why Dora stayed behind. One explanation is that no relatives offered her and her husband a way out. Another explanation is that her husband refused to flee, and she stayed with him.

Most of those who left Lithuania that summer thought they would return home in a few weeks. People assumed the Soviets would occupy the little country for a few months, and eventually, the Germans would push the Soviets out again, as they had before. As a result, people—including my Mom—left the country with few belongings. Most refugees hid their cherished possessions with relatives or buried them in the countryside. My Mom did not even think to pack her hand-woven national folkdress. How I would have loved to have that!

Mom did pop a winter coat and two pairs of shoes into her suitcase. She still doesn't know why she packed those items. Smart move.

Kaunas, Lithuania, 1936. It's Aunt Dora! She's no longer either a Gibson Girl or a Flapper. Instead, she's updated her style to the glam Hollywood trends.

Dora Gets Her Wish

My Mother's maternal Aunt, Teodora ("Dora"), liked it when people paid attention to her. An auburn filly with green eyes and a porcelain complexion, Dora was a rare beauty in the mousy Baltic States. Her fashion sense was keen, and photos show her transforming from Gibson Girl to Flapper to Glamorous Vixen. Even in the steely, Soviet 1950s, Dora looked like an unpracticed double for Joan Crawford.

Dora also was, as relatives whispered delicately, "ahead of her time." In the 1920s and 1930s, she worked full time as a paralegal in a large notarial office whose most important clients were British. At night, Dora played the background keyboards in cinema houses for silent movies. In dour Lithuania, she wore sleeveless dresses sewn in bright colors. She waited until her thirties to marry. When she did wed, she married a twice-divorced man, and she chose not to have children.

Mariampolis, Lithuania, 1920. This is my Mother's maternal Grandmother, Zigmunta, and my Mother's maternal Aunt, Dora.