My name is Ya’arit Glezer-Krakinovsky, and I was born in Kaunas in 1947. My parents were also from Kaunas – mother Rivka Discant and father Pinia Krakinovsky. I have one younger brother Moshe. We lived in the very center of Kaunas on Laisves Aleja. It was a 3 room apartment where 3 families lived together. […]

Romualdas Kasmauskas recounts his difficult adolescence during the war years in Lithuania – how, as a teenager, he was arrested simply for childish curiosity and imprisoned in various locations, including Fort IX in Kaunas. Romualdas is a poet and a member of the Lithuanian Rural Writers’ Union. He has published several books of poetry: Sudeginti […]

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 […]

A 1930 Kaunas-born Litvak Roza Gapanavičiūtė Bloch talks about her family’s experience during the Second World War in Kaunas ghetto, and later – in the Stutthof concentration camp. The Holocaust took almost all her loved ones – mother Anna, father Markus, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins… Roza ran across her brother Boris in the empty […]

Litvak Roza Litay shares memories of her family’s life in Kaunas and beyond – the fate of the loved ones during World War II, the Soviet era and later. Roza’s mom of blessed memory, singer with an extraordinary voice, Nechama Lifšicaitė. – – – “My mother grew up in Alytus. As she said, in Lithuania […]

Partizan Stasys Dovydaitis tells a story about All Saints’ day events in 1956 in Kaunas Old Cemetery.   I am in the club of the signatories of February 16th.The brother of my father, professor Pranas Dovydaitis was a signatory of Acto f February 16th. He was a director in “Aušra” gymnasium and later he lectured […]

Konstantin Pakrašov, a diakon in the Kaunas Orthodox Church and a seventh-generation Kaunasian, tells us about his Russian lineage, introduces the Kaunas Orthodox Church Community together with his role in it, and discusses the long history of different cultures and religions getting along in his hometown. – – –“In Lithuania I am a seventh-generation Kaunasian. […]

Lilija, who was born in Raseiniai and spent her early days there shares her memories. During her study years, semi-Jewish and semi-Lithuanian woman moved to Kaunas, where has been creating her life ever since until 2005, when emigrated to Israel. I was always my father’s favorite, I went to his work, and would be his […]