This Year's Banquet

Mr. Irene and I just attended the annual banquet hosted by Madison Vilnius Sister Cities, Inc. Our friends V and her husband again joined us for the weekend. It was a great occasion.

The Madison Club once more decorated the tables in the tricolors of the Lithuanian flag.

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This year, Mr. Irene welcomed the guests.

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Guests enjoyed cocktails before the meal. Some of us eat the olives first.

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We had a great turnout.

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The chef is becoming expert at preparing Lithuanian dishes.

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We started out with a favorite: Šaltibarščiai.

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The kitchen remembered to serve the soup with a traditional accompaniment: boiled potatoes.

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Our featured speaker this year was Dr. Audrius Plioplys, creator of the Hope and Spirit exhibit.

A Friend's Mother

 

Kaunas, Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, November 11, 1978. This is the mother of my Mom's friend Joy. On the back of this photo, Joy wrote, "This is my Mama, Marija, in Kaunas when she reached her 80th birthday. From 1941 she endured 17 years in the Siberian prison camp, along the shores of the Laptev Sea. We survived those years in Stalin's prison listening to propaganda."

Anniversary of the Later Deportations

March 25, 1949.

Here's an (English-language) account of the 1941 deportations. More here.

Back to the USSR

Travel posters from Soviet, government-run travel agency.

Truly Displaced

Irkutsk, Siberia, USSR, Summer 1956. My Mom's friend Joy stands near the Siberian barracks with her mother and children. Joy mailed this photo after she returned to Lithuania.

"Mission Siberia"

An annual pilgrimage.

June Misery

Kėdianai (?), Lithuania, about 1938. My friend V writes, "About this time in June, 1941 my grandparents, who were school teachers and uncle (he was 16) were part of the Soviet's mass deportations of Lithuanians to Siberia. They were put on a train in a cattle car and taken to Yakutsk, Russia. The anniversary of this holocaust is never mentioned in the media. So, today I honor their memory. My grandfather Petras [M.] perished in a Siberian prison camp." (Links added.)
 
Thanks to my friend V for making this photo available to us.

A Recovered Image

My Mom's friend Joy sent this photo in the early 1990s.

Kaunas, Lithuania, 1923. This is my Mom.

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 On the back of the photo, Joy wrote:

 Dearest [Irene's Mom],

This is you!

This photo is historical. It was with me in Siberia in my photo album. It endured all of our sufferings along the shores of the Laptev Sea. It was there for all 17 years of the deportation. Then the photo returned with me to Lithuania in 1958, and now it is in America! 1991.

June 14

The Soviet deportations of Baltic citizens began seventy-three years ago today. See here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Memories surface.

"'We see NATO airplanes, we hear them, and it reassures us a little - but will they protect us? I've been a peaceful person all my life, but now the thoughts keep bubbling up: What if…?'"

An Occasional Visitor

Kaunas, Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, about 1973. My Dad's older cousin, Vytas, visits with his niece, Kaunas Nina. Kaunas Nina holds her doggie, Musytė.

Vytas, like his brother Henry, was one of my Dad's older cousins. After Vytas returned to Lithuania from the Siberian Gulag, the regime prohibited him from living in a city. As a result, Vytas could visit Kaunas only occasionally.

"The name of the film will be changed in order to avoid confusion with the upcoming adaptation of EL James' Fifty Shades of Gray."

A movie based on Ruta Sepetys's novel, Between Shades of Gray, will be filmed this year.

Commissars' Club

 
Irkutsk, Siberia, USSR, Summer 1956. One of my Mom's friends—who spent 17 years in Siberia—sent this snapshot of the "club." 

After the War, and After More

Near Kaunas, Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, late 1960s. This is how my Dad's older cousin, Vytas, looked some years after he returned from Siberia. Here is a photo of Vytas taken before World War II erupted.

Thanks to Vytas's niece—my Kaunas Cousin—for making this photo available to us.

June 14, 1941

Soviet deportations of citizens living in the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia began on June 14, 1941.

This document presents eyewitness accounts of the June, 1941 "Išvežimai."

Before the War

Kaunas, Lithuania, late 1930s. This is my Dad's older cousin, Vytas. The Soviets deported Vytas to Siberia, where he lived in exile for about seventeen years.

Thanks to my Kaunas Cousin for making this photo available to us.

They still try to rewrite history.

Russia's ambassador makes some controversial observations on the eve of the ninety-fifth anniversary of Lithuanian independence.

Click on the "Deportation," "Displaced Persons," or "Siberia" tags below.

Stalin World

Grutas Park.

(Interviews conducted in ... Russian.)

Recipes in Translation

Preparations for our little Kūčios are under way. I searched today for plotkelės ("Opłateki" in Polish) at our local Russian store. The shopkeeper had never heard of them; I suppose it's not a Russian Orthodox tradition. She looked at me as if I were speaking Greek when I described the wafers.

I also am tweaking the "Christmas Fish" recipe. This is a preparation of a white fish and sliced onions layered in a thick tomato sauce. It's served cold, like the other foods we eat on Christmas Eve. I've made it for many years, but I have not been satisfied with my recipe, especially after tasting two delicious variations served recently at our local, Madison Kūčios. I've received a couple of recipes to try, and a search today revealed our "Christmas Fish" is a close cousin to Poland's "Fish in the Greek Style." Who knew!

Every Kūčios, Mom and I prepare two "Vinegretai," or mixed vegetable salads. One is a "pink" salad made with beets and navy beans. The other is a "white" salad made with potatoes, peas, and carrots. Our family always called the latter "Babos Vinegretas," or "Grandma's Salad," in honor of my Russian-born, paternal Grandmother, Tatjana. When I moved to Venice in the early 1980s, I noticed that most delicatessens carried a dish that looked identical to "Babos Vinegretas." The Italians call it "Insalata Russa," and it's a modification of a classic Russian dish, "Salat Olivyeh." Iranians make "Salad Oliveh," too. Sources attribute the recipe to a nineteenth-century French chef who lived in the Russian empire. Ah! I had thought Tatjana was the genius behind the dish.

This year, we also will be making a spicy carrot salad, "Aštrios Morkų Salotos." I stumbled on the dish when I bought this product (scroll down to the fourteenth jar on the page) at our Russian store. The salad is identical to a spicy carrot salad that the Russians call Korean Carrots. Russians incorporated the dish into their cuisine after those Koreans deported by Stalin began living in the western Soviet Union. Today, every Russian grocer carries Korean Carrots. At our shop, you can buy the bottled salad (made in Lithuania), a fresh salad in the deli case, or a spice packet to make the salad at home.

That got me back to thinking about the Napoleonas, the torte French pastry chefs adapted from Lithuanian bakers.

Lithuanians, Poles, Russians, Greeks, Italians, Iranians, Koreans, French: it's all one big table.

Verona, Wisconsin, March 2011. The "pink" salad of beets and beans is on the menu. (Photo by Laurence Meade.)

UPDATE: I've corrected a grammatical error in the first paragraph. *Blushes.*

"Christmas in Siberia, 1942"

The experience of Lithuanian deportees.

See this post for how my family confronted this time frame.