Romualdas Kasmauskas

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 tiltai (Burned Bridges, 1998), Paskutinė kryžkelė (The Last Crossroads, 1999), and Devintoji banga (The Ninth Wave, 2000).

—

I am Romualdas Kasmauskas, born in 1928. Until the age of thirty, I grew up in my hometown of Baisogala, which used to belong to the Kėdainiai district. My father, Jonas Kasmauskas, was a worker at the Komaro manor, where he paved roads with stones. My mother, Elena Kasmauskienė, came from Dubysa, in the town of Žaiginiai.

My sister Marytė also worked as a maid at the Komaro manor. Unfortunately, she died very young, at the age of eighteen, in 1942. She contracted diphtheria, and there was no cure for the disease at that time.

I finished school in Baisogala, where I sat at the same desk as the famous poet Vytautas Blože. Later, I studied at the Agricultural Academy and became an agronomist-economist.

I witnessed all three occupations of Lithuania up close. In 1940, when I was just a twelve-year-old teenager, I saw the Russian army enter Lithuania, march into Baisogala, and occupy it. At that time, the war had not yet begun. We teenagers weren’t afraid; we were more curious. I remember running to the road to look at the army and the tanks. The Russian soldiers were dusty and dirty. They weren’t wearing boots, but black bintai on their feet.

Eventually, the Russians settled in the forest near Baisogala. In the evenings, they would show movies to the public at the Komaro manor, where there was a meadow and a stadium. They had brought a portable projector with them. They would spread out a huge white sheet, which became a screen. They showed Russian films, such as Chapaev… We would go to watch because this entertainment was free.

Russian soldiers were building an airfield near the town of Baisogala. Lithuania was a border state at the time. The soldiers brought sand and soil in trucks, prepared and leveled the surface for the airfield. We children asked the soldiers to give us rides in their trucks.

There was a Jewish bakery in Baisogala, and they baked very tasty rolls topped with egg yolk. The soldiers would ask us to buy these delicious French rolls. They would give us a few cents and we would run to buy them. Bulkutės were very cheap – like a miracle to them… In return, they would give us a ride. Eventually, their senior politrukas (commander) noticed all this. He scolded the ordinary Russian soldiers, forbade them to give us rides, and forbade us to buy bulkutes for them…

A year later, in 1941, war suddenly broke out. The Germans marched through the town of Baisogala. There was no fighting there. We went to see what the German army looked like, how their motorcyclists rode. At that time, there were Jews living everywhere in Lithuania. Someone said that one of the village shops belonged to Jews… Then the German soldiers ordered the people to move away. They broke open the door, went inside and took cigarettes and chocolate. They didn’t take anything else and left. Later, the residents themselves carried the goods out of the shop… At that time, many trains passed through the Baisogala railway station. They were carrying soldiers. We saw many Hungarian soldiers… The carriages were freight cars with “Hungaria, Hungaria” written on them. They were probably heading for the Leningrad front. There was all kinds of military equipment at the Baisogala railway station, broken equipment… We children, some smaller, some bigger, would wander around there, find bullets and take them apart. If a bullet had a red tip, it meant that it was an explosive bullet and if it hit a person in the head, it would blow their brains out. We knew that! What were we like… We were curious to examine and dismantle them. We threw the bullets into the fire and watched them explode…

Apparently, someone saw us and reported us. I was probably the most active, the most restless… So the others pointed me out… I was the only one accused. A policeman came to my house on a bicycle and took me to the Baisogala railway station. I was accused of collecting bullets for Russian partisans. But we had no idea about that. We were just kids, fourteen, fifteen years old. But no one asked me any questions and no one explained anything to me… From the town of Baisogala, I was taken to Gudžiūnai, to a detention center – a prison. Later, I was transferred to the town of Krakių. I was held there for about a week. There were adults in the cell in Krakių… As I understood, there may have been men among them who were actually supporters of the Russian partisans. They even planned to escape from there… The German police would call them in for interrogation. Those men would come back beaten. I wasn’t called in. Later, I was taken by truck to Kėdainiai.

There were so many people who had been arrested and detained, it was packed. The cell was stuffy, there was no water or food… After a few weeks, they transferred us to the town of Josvainiai, ten kilometers from Kėdainiai. The Lithuanian police forced us to walk those ten kilometers… We were kept in a detention center there for several more days. Later, I and several adult men were taken by cart and horse to Panevėžiukas near the Nevėžis River. At that time, a small steamboat, similar to a barge, was running between Panevėžiukas and Kaunas. Early in the morning, they put us on that steamboat and took us to Kaunas. It took two or three days to be transferred from one town to another… It was scary, you didn’t know what awaited you… There were all kinds of rumors that they would shoot us, deport us…

I ended up in the Kaunas hard labor prison at 9 A. Mickevičiaus Street, which is now a detention center. They put me in a cell for minors, which was also very crowded… In one of the cells there were German soldiers – perhaps those who had deserted from the front or ended up there for other offenses… They would take us minors to the German cell to wash the floors. The German deserters themselves did not wash the floors. I had to stay there for about two months. All the prison windows were boarded up from the outside, so you could only look up, but not out onto the street. Through the cracks, I could see the blue sky…

One night, sirens suddenly sounded and Russian planes appeared. It was 1943, and the Kaunas railway station was being bombed. There was a war going on… We were all quickly herded into the basement. No one knew – maybe a bomb would hit the prison building… Finally, they herded us from Mickevičiaus Street into a courtyard and loaded us onto a truck. They told us to lie down so that we couldn’t see each other and couldn’t jump out or escape while the truck was moving. They took us to Fort IX.

Everything looked very scary in the fort. It was damp and there were a lot of people… I was the only teenager among the adults. There was one toilet for twenty or thirty people in the cell. It was an iron toilet and a barrel, commonly known as a paraša. The smell was awful, a real stench… There were also two-story bunks. They gave us a kind of liquid soup made from frozen beets to eat. It made people terribly sick…

They also made us go for walks in the courtyard, a rectangular space… Guards watched us from a tower above. They made us walk in pairs, with our arms behind our backs. About ten minutes every morning.

We didn’t see with our own eyes how they shot Jews and political prisoners. But we could hear the shooting. It was like this: a guard would call a person and say, “Get out, get out, get out!” And then you would hear shots… It was very uncomfortable and there was always tension in the air…

My mother wasn’t allowed to visit me. She would come to Fort XI, but she couldn’t get inside… At that time, they didn’t allow anyone to cross the Vileišio Bridge in Vilijampolė, so she would take a boat across the Neris River and then walk up the hill toward Fort XI with other people…

After some time, I was brought back from Fort IX to Kaunas, to Mickevičiaus Street. There, they read a document in German and handed it to me. Then they let me go. My mother met me at the gate… Only after some time did she tell me everything. During the German occupation, there was a labor exchange in the town of Baisogala, called “Arbeitsamt” in German. It was run by some German guy. My mom went to ask him to let her son go… She went there more than once, bringing him bacon and sausage…

She saved me. They probably treated me as a minor… Because in Germany and its occupied territories during the war, there was a law allowing twelve-year-old children to be shot for crimes! I remember an incident when some shepherd boys were grazing cows and soldiers had stretched a field telephone cable nearby. A child cut the cable to use it as a whip to herd the cows. The Germans lost their connection. They shot the child on the spot. Incidents like this meant that you were considered a saboteur – a partisan.

I was also threatened with execution… But I didn’t understand that at the time, I knew nothing.

Thanks to my mother’s efforts, I was released…

Seventy-seven years have passed since then. Last year, I went to Fort XI to see that courtyard. I felt terrible. Suddenly, all the images came back to me. It was horrifying.

War draws everyone in… When great powers are at war with each other, no one can remain neutral… At that time, it was enough to be a witness – just to see something, just to pass by – to be considered a participant…

—

Romualdas Kasmauskas

IX FORT

Who does not know the Ninth Fort,

Who has not seen its damp walls,

A place more suited to a resort –

Old trees on the slopes of the fort.

I remember the hot summer,

When apples smelled in the garden.

The smell in the fort’s courtyard was so acrid,

As if people’s ashes were smoldering.

How many lives were extinguished in this fort –

This melting pot of European nations?

Here, people were worthless,

Not human beings, but simply targets.

Oh, Lithuania, what you didn’t see,

The occupiers were all the same:

They killed people, lined them up against the wall,

Some left, others came.

I still remember the inscription

On the fortress wall, next to the hard beds:

“Let us cherish freedom while we have it,

And not wait for our evil enemies.”

—

AUTUMN

We ran through the fields, barefoot,

Sweet summer, full of flowers,

September with its frost and morning chill

Already reminiscent of rough winter.

Our faces, tanned from the summer heat

Remind us of summer in autumn,

Only the cries of flocks of cranes

Bring nostalgia to our hearts.

And the maple tree behind the barn

Blazes like a Midsummer bonfire,

This is the village landscape in September,

A stained-glass window of the approaching October.

Our land is beautiful with its lakes,

The Nevėžis River when it floods,

When the chestnuts fall, it is truly beautiful,

With cobwebs tangled in the branches.

—

Romualdas’ story inspired one of the projects of the Story Festival 2020 organized by Kaunas 2022 – a theatrical performance “Stories of Interrupted Lives: Young People Talk About War”. The performance was directed by Rokas Bertulis and performed by a youth troupe and dancer Greta Bernotaitė.

—

Interview date: November 2020.

Prepared by Augustė Kupstaitytė