Salomėja Užupienė-Rūta

Salomėja Piliponytė-Užupienė was born in 1928 in the village of Mackūnai, Rumšiškės parish (now Kaišiadorys district), into the family of farmers Bernardas and Ona Piliponys. She grew up with two brothers, Alfonsas and Bronius, and three sisters, Marytė, Aldona, and Valerija. The family lived modestly, working hard on their small plot of land.

When World War II broke out and the front approached, the family was forced to leave their home and hide in the forest. When they returned, they found only the ruins of their home and had to rebuild it from scratch. However, the family was not together for long. Salomėja lost her father and mother very quickly, and eventually she was left alone with her sister in the unfinished house.

Salomėja (under the pseudonym Rūta) joined the resistance movement at a very young age, becoming a liaison in early 1946 and a partisan in 1947. At the age of eighteen, she gave birth to a daughter, but was unable to raise her, having to hide from the security services. In 1948, Salomėja was arrested, brutally tortured, and eventually deported to the Krasnoyarsk region, to a special camp in Taishet. She returned to Lithuania only in 1956 and settled in Kaunas. Throughout her time in the camp and later in Lithuania, Salomėja never stopped searching for her daughter, whom she found only 50 years later…

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Our village was very beautiful. Now it is gone. Only two houses remain, occupied by people who moved there later – I doubt they know the history of Mackūnai village. The only thing our family has left there are the graves where our parents and relatives are buried.

I don’t meet people my age anymore, but there are children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren… It’s nice to meet them and tell them our story. About the hard life we had. I am drawn to those places by my longing for my homeland, the beautiful nature, and memories of my youth. I see my life in Mackūnai as if through a fog – it was accompanied by painful experiences and the loss of loved ones. In general, we lived a very difficult life. We didn’t have nice clothes, shoes, telephones, televisions, only a radio… And that’s not all.

When we were little children, life was difficult. We had twelve hectares of land, which was very poor, half of it was arable and half was just swamp. My mother sang in the church choir and at funerals. She had a very good voice and spoke four languages. She helped people a lot and took in women in labor. She didn’t finish school, but she was taught privately by her mother. So my mother read and wrote beautifully – she even helped other people write letters and statements. She used to tell us fairy tales… She was a wonderful mother. Later, she met my father. My father was from the Kaišiadorys district, from the village of Vaitiekūnai. My parents got married when they were twenty-two, in the Diocese of Telšiai.

We lived in a wooden house with two rooms. There was one large room with a Russian stove on which we cooked our meals. Later, my parents built a brick house. I went to school, which was three kilometers away. When I came home, I had to prepare firewood for the stove. My brother and father worked: they cut and chopped wood, watered the animals… We all worked hard from an early age. In the evening, my mother would prepare dinner. We usually ate potatoes, cabbage, and beets in the village. So that we wouldn’t fall asleep while waiting for dinner and tired after work, my mother would tell us stories. Now I regret that I didn’t write them down…

My parents were very religious. We were all baptized in the church, and when we turned 10, we received our First Communion. It was twelve kilometers from our house to the church in Rumšiškės. Every Sunday we would ride there on horses. Later, everyone got married in church – I don’t remember anyone living without being married.

We children were very friendly and had only one day off – Sunday, when we could meet and play games we made up. Children from our village and neighboring villages would get together. The older young people would organize evening gatherings and dances until late at night.

When the war started, I was already in fourth grade. During a work lesson, my teacher and I saw tanks driving through the fields, getting stuck in the wet ground and fallow fields. The teacher started crying and told us that our land was being occupied. Then we all started crying with her. When we got home, we heard that Lithuania had been occupied by the Russians and that our president, Smetona, had fled. We were young and didn’t understand what was happening… Later, we watched the soldiers cooking their meals; it was interesting to see how they were dressed…

When the Russians came, drinking and family disputes began in the villages. We were forbidden to go to church or celebrate holidays, our wages were reduced, we were required to pay tribute in grain and livestock, people were deported, and land was taken from those who were wealthier and given to those who were loyal to the Russian authorities… Life became even harder for people. They started stealing from factories and canteens just to survive. The Russians closed schools and started banning everything Lithuanian. They would come to our homes, take down holy pictures and replace them with Russian ones of Stalin and Lenin.

In 1941, the Germans drove out the Russians and became our masters. We didn’t feel the German occupation so badly; we thought they would save us… The Germans and Russians changed sides several times. Finally, my parents heard on the radio that the Russians were driving the Germans back from Moscow. Then we began to hear rumbling and cannon fire. We all went into the forest to hide. We stayed there for two weeks. We had food because we had taken livestock with us…

At that time, men began to be called up for the army and taken to the front. People felt that they had to save themselves from Russian cruelty. Older officers who had served in Smetona’s army began to organize resistance groups. Young people joined them and collected weapons left behind by the Germans. A fight broke out between the partisans and the Russians. Some Lithuanians, known as stribai, also joined them. They were fiercer than the Russians. Not only young men went into battle, but also young women, who were mainly couriers, supporters, and partisans.

Our young people did not know a good life; we were poor. During the time of Lithuania, we were very friendly, we loved our homeland and each other. There was such a great feeling of love and kindness. We felt no fear. We had sworn to die rather than surrender alive. When shooting started in the forest, we would hide in bunkers. When it stopped, we would come out, and everything was normal again. We laughed and played…

My brother was also called up for military service. At first he went into hiding, but later he gathered his belongings and left for Vilnius without asking our parents. My mother cried, and I didn’t want him to leave either. But it was useless. A couple of weeks later, we received a letter from him: “Dad and Mom, forgive me, bring me some bread and potatoes…” My brother got a job with the internal affairs militia. He directed traffic on the streets—there were no traffic lights at the time. Although we didn’t have much to eat ourselves, we decided to take some food to my brother. At that time, the trip to Vilnius was very difficult and took at least three days. There were no public trains, only military trains that ran between Berlin and Moscow. They transported all kinds of people and government property from Germany – tanks, cars, dishes, pots, clothes, food, and other small items. The soldiers sold everything at the stations. The train often stopped and stood for a very long time. It would stop, then start again… Civilians were forbidden to travel on them – you had to sneak on and ride… At first, my father traveled to Vilnius, but then there was no one left to do the work at home. So I left. I was very young, I had nothing to wear, nothing to cover myself with. I had only knitted some thick woolen socks. It was cold where we lived, so they were quite good for walking. But in Vilnius there was snow everywhere, it was wet… My God… I walked through the wet snow to my brother’s house, carrying a bundle of food. He lived on Totorių Street. I warmed up there and had to go home the next day. Fortunately, a policeman had some old boots and gave them to me. I walked back happily, wearing boots.

After the front passed, we returned from the forest. We found empty land – the entire village had been burned down, only two houses remained. We were a large family – seven people in an empty field… So we settled down near the forest. We started to look for a place to live.

We found furniture, cupboards, beds, tables, and pieces of plywood in the German bunkers. My father built a hut out of them. We were glad that it protected us from the rain and wind. We also collected old burnt bricks and built a stove to cook food. My father and I would go to the forest with horses and a cart to cut down trees. We did this with a hand saw. We brought back enough wood for a barn and a shed. We also hired two workers to build a house. By autumn, we had built a pretty good house, only the ceiling and floor were missing. But for that we needed boards from the sawmill. So we went to the sawmill in Kaišiadorys.

On the way home, a great misfortune befell us. It was night and it was raining. My father was driving ahead of us. Suddenly, I heard a crash and saw a column of fire and smoke. The horse, frightened, threw me and the cart over. I crawled out from under the planks and started calling for my father in the deafening silence. No one answered. I realized that my brave father was dead… His cart with logs had hit a mine. I crawled to my father’s cart, where there was a huge hole. And warm earth… I thought that my father was lying there, torn to pieces… People appeared with lanterns and lit up the hole, but my father wasn’t there. I found him about 100 meters away… He was lying in a small ditch, his hood covering his face. I pulled off the hood, his lips moved, he wanted to say something to me. But my father’s life had ended. I heard the mournful neighing of horses in the meadows – they were standing close together. I unhitched them – they returned home on their own…

A funeral was taking place nearby, so people helped me put my father’s body on a cart. I brought him home to my mother. We hugged and cried. Two of our neighbors’ houses had survived the bombing. We asked one of them to lay my father out. That’s how we were left without him… He was only 46 years old. That was on October 16, 1946. From then on, we did all the men’s and women’s work, plowed the land with a plow, and mowed hay. Little by little, we moved forward.

But my mother became seriously ill and our life became even harder. We had given the workers grain to build our house, so we had nothing left to sow in the fields. Then my mother and my brother’s wife harnessed the horses and went begging – asking wealthier people for grain. Even though my mother was feeling unwell, she went anyway. People helped us, and we were happy…

But soon everything changed. I suddenly found out that my mother had died that night while I was staying at my cousin’s house. I was overcome with horror – I ran home, my legs were shaking… When I got there, my mother had already been laid out. We buried her. The greatest pain was the children’s cries… But graves are lifeless. Only my youngest sister and I were left. She was nine at the time, and I was fifteen… I kept thinking, “What am I going to do now, how am I going to live on?”

I started working for people, herding cows and digging potatoes. For my work, I received a basket of potatoes. I saved them carefully. My sister and I would eat only two potatoes and a piece of bread. We also got some grain from people. In our free time, we would go berry and mushroom picking. I would go to Jonava, sell the berries and mushrooms, and buy salt, sugar, kerosene… So that we would have at least a little something. There was no peace at that time, there was fierce fighting between the partisans and the Russians. Life was very difficult. The partisans would come at night. And the stribai (Soviet security forces) would come during the day. We didn’t know when, where, or what might happen… Life led me to become a courier. The men would go into the forest and become partisans, and most of the girls were couriers. Time passed, and I started dating a partisan and became pregnant at the age of eighteen. I had a daughter, whom we secretly named Birute. Unfortunately, my boyfriend was killed soon after… My sister helped me a lot and everything would have been fine. But the partisans came to my house more and more often and the stribai (Soviet security forces) soon began to suspect me. Once, the head of the security forces came from Rumšiškės and told me: “Sign up to work for us, or you’ll be arrested.” It hit me like a bolt from the blue… They gave me a week to think about it. Later, the partisans came and I told them everything that had happened. They promised to help me. They found temporary shelter for my daughter with Russians in a village.

They provided me with documents under a different name. Then I took an oath to fight for my homeland and was given the pseudonym Rūta. And I left. The life of a partisan was not easy. The five of us spent the whole winter in a bunker, never venturing above ground.

Except at night, when we had to. Since I was a partisan courier, I was mostly responsible for “public relations,” passing messages and documents, but I also had to run from bullets and was wounded… I had a weapon. When I got my documents, we moved to another bunker. There were more partisans there. At that time, the deputy district commander Vėjas informed us that there would be a meeting of all Lithuanian partisans in Kaunas. He warned us that some of them would be wearing Russian uniforms. I immediately became suspicious. This was supposed to happen on September 16, 1948. We got up in the morning, Tarbūnienė and Grenda left for the meeting, but promised to come back. And I stayed to wait for them. I waited for a very long time. I had a feeling that I shouldn’t have gone… Later I found out that those who went were all shot. Only Ožeraitis, Putinas and I remained.

I left for Vilnius, got an apartment there, and eventually my sister came to stay with me. We both went to look for my daughter, because I knew that the stribai had taken her to a children’s home. On September 21, we went to Kaunas, to the Vilijampolė orphanage. I looked for my girl at the doctor’s office, at the director’s office, we looked at all the children… They were all the same, with their hair cut short and wearing dark brown smocks. I couldn’t find my daughter… That night, my sister and I slept separately. Four militiamen arrested me and took me to Kaišiadorys. That was the beginning of my long journey to Siberia.

I was interrogated and kept in solitary confinement. They kept telling me that I had been sentenced to twenty-five years. At first, I was held in Vilnius. I was kept in a basement there for a long time. Finally, they read out the sentence: I had been sentenced to ten years in prison and five years of exile. I was taken to the Krasnoyarsk region, to the Taishet labor camp.

I spent eight years in the camp as a political prisoner. When we arrived, our first job was to break stones. We had to break them into pieces and stack them. The quota was two cubic meters. We were given 650 grams of bread, soup, and porridge. We lived in a barracks with an iron stove in the middle… When we got up in the morning, the windows were frozen shut. We went to work, came back to eat, prayed, and sometimes we all got together and sang.

Later, I made friends and got to know a Russian doctor. Once I knitted her a sweater. She was very pleased. She helped me a lot – she falsely diagnosed me with glandular fever, and I was admitted to hospital for a couple of weeks. I recovered there. L