Editor's Note: Steve lives in England and is responding to a question about Lithuanians there and his family.
Are there many Liths - don’t know really - no one advertises themselves
as such. During the 50s anyone from east of Berlin was Polish. My mam
and dad went to "Polish" dances at the camps -wonder if you know about
UK camps? Better come back to that later. No Lets start from the
beginning, well as much as I know..... It was 1947 and dad Juozas (aka
Joe) was in Lubeck DP camp with two other Liths. They were about 18yrs
old and had not seen parents or relatives since 41. But that’s another
story.
Anyway they are being interviewed as to what they are going to do and
where they want to go. As they are displaced persons and NON COMBATANTS,
then they are eligible to go to ANY allied country (except France- I
thank God he didn't go there even if he could - Neighbors from hell or
what ) If they had been combatants, i.e., with the Germans or with the
Russkies as "volunteers" then they were sent back to Russia - to certain
death. He was offered US, Britain, Canada, Australia and NZ. His mates
went to Canada as they had family there - and they all wanted to be
Lumberjacks. Dad to the best of his knowledge had no relatives anywhere
in the world other that Lithuania and he had heard stories that those
who had military connections were either dead or on their way to death
in Siberia. The "rumors" being recounted by those heading west had been
growing.
Anyway off he trots down to Lubeck station with a whole lot of other
"Liths" Lats, Poles and Ukrainians. Anyway they get on this train and
head for Hamburg, cuz its cheaper for the allies to send em this way,
than sending em all around Denmark. Well they get off the train and head
for a ship. Oh how many times have I asked him what was the ship called
- "don’t know- Why do you want to know ? I didn't need to know the name
of the ship. I wasn't getting off anywhere other than HARWICH. What a
daft question" -and yep I don’t suppose he did need to know the name of
the ship.
Well they arrived at Harwich and were trained up to Cambridge and given
UK identification (thank god he kept it). He is in Cambridge, one of
the sleepy hollows of the world, dreamy spires of the universities and
as quaint as it can be - just out of DP camp and he realizes this is
heaven.
Now they move him again this time by bus (I think he meant truck) and
he arrived at a demobilized USAAF air base and that is where they were
billeted. This was his base until "they" said it wasn't. Here the men
were put to work maintaining the camp - repairing runways, painting etc.
- At this point DEC 1947 the cold war was in its infancy and the UK
govt. decided to do up the air bases (just in case!). Anyway short time
later he was moved to Yorkshire and then he started to enjoy life. At
the camp just outside YORK they were again on maintenance duties and
some even went down the pits. But on SATURDAY nights the local village
halls were given over to the "foreigners" and they held dances to which
the refugees (male and female) would invite the locals. There were not
that many foreign women and the local men were still away on War
service. Any way these dances became advertised as POLISH dances as the
common language amongst the refugees was POLISH - or German or Russian.
Last two options didn't go down well though.
There were also a good number of Jews at the do's in Yorkshire but they
were not staying at my dads camp. Village halls tended to be wooden and
the noise of the boots on the floor was very loud. After a while they
moved him again, this time to South Wales, where he was most unhappy -
the welsh are very insular and they didn’t take to these foreigners
taking over their jobs. He requested a move and was granted one to
Newcastle-under Lyme just to the left of Stoke. He was now out of the
camps and put up in a hostel with other "Poles."
He was down the mines again now and Saturday nights were the highlight
again. After awhile he met my mother and they seemed to like each
other. My dad was quite popular with the men and women - now don’t get
that that wrong - you see he spoke excellent English and others
couldn’t. So he tended to be a go between. They became serious, got
engaged, Catholic church refused to marry them at that alter because mum
was a proddy so they had a registry wedding in April 1950. In Dec 1951 I
came along - I was a 5th generation child on my English side - but I was
told that I was the first child to be a full term 9 months pregnancy
!!!! Having traced back to 1860 I can confirm it!
Anyway he'd arrived with nothing, not even close friends and now was
married, with a child and contemplating buying his own house. That was
unheard of in the 50s.
Well my first recollection that I was different was all my relatives
spoke one way and all the folks me dad spoke to talked different. They
still tended to speak Polish but by the mid to late 50s they had all
tended to speak English and it was hard to tell people apart - you could
tell the Eyties though they still speak foreign to this day.
I don’t know of any Lithuanians around us other than the Dargis family,
and we didn’t tend to get on well as they had a daughter, Danute and I
was a bit of a naughty boy who mothers didn't like much.....but my mam
did and still does. There were three polish families near me, Kulicz,
Pawlak, and Okulicz. There area we lived in was multi cultural there
were Eyties, Poles, Irish, (North and South) Jocks and we all got on
together. Later there came a colored family but I'd grown up by then. I
went to college with a Paul Kamerauskas who I now think could have been
Lithuanian but you couldn't tell.
So yes I suppose I am a lone Lith. There may be others but few and far
between. I have been visiting lots of cemeteries and spend a lot of time
looking just to see if there are many Lith sounding names but they tend
to be rare and polish sounding being the most common ending in CZ.
I know my dad’s friend who went stateside was L.Bucinskas and that his
best man/witness at the wedding were George Renke and Stefan Kotlowski.
He also had two friends name Alec Wizneak and Alex Jurgelaviskus. As a
DP he had to report any change of address or circumstances to the police
until 1960.
Steve’s Thoughts
I wonder, looking back, how I or even my kids would have faired in
those times. Imagine taken by the Russians at 12/14 years of age. He had
been told many stories about the Russians from parents etc but had never
experienced them as he was born in either 1926 or 1929.Image the fear
that must have been present in his young mind. Imagine his relief at
being 'captured' by the Germans ! They shipped him to Stettin where he
was a 'worker' for the Reich. He was, allegedly somewhere near the docks
and railway yards and spent a lot of time repairing bombed rail lines
etc. Another job was to empty bombed areas of dead bodies - many times
he tried to recount what it was like but he could never finish.
He once told me he had eaten horse, dog and rat - I told him that was
disgusting (I was young) and he turned to me and said he wished to god I
never got to know what rat tasted like. BUT if I was THAT hungry then I
would eat it now matter how disgusting it sounded. When he wasn't
road/line mending he learned cobbling, and tailoring. Even got good
enough that he could mend and make shoes in his spare time when he came
to the UK. He made me and mother clothes and even made my wife’s trouser
suit for our wedding - trouser suites were IN in 1970. He was a dab hand
at the hold treadle sewing machine.
I don’t know what else he saw during these times but I can say that at
school I was the only boy in my class who was not circumcised - You know
what boys are like - "Dad why is his different than mine??" and the
answer he gave didn’t make any sense at all at the time, only later did
I understand the implications .The answer was "It may save your life
one day " the year was about1957/58.
As the spring of 45 rolled on the westward migration was becoming
intense and he said he just went with the flow - the guards were more
worried than the inmates.This part is all about zig-zagging across
country trying to keep out of everyone’s way - he said you didn't know
who was going to shoot you .Couple the horror of his own experiences and
the rumors that were coming from the east the caused him to just keep
going west. I don’t even know where he was picked up by the allies or
if he actually walked all the way to Lubeck. That is the next place I
know he was at Lubeck summer of 1947 - he may have been there since 1945
but who knows. He eventually set sail for UK on DEC 4 1947.
Could I have coped? I honestly don’t know. To end on a lighter note I
remember him asking me " If you did have to eat horse - which bit would
you eat ?"I said the muscles or something - not the icky bits like
kidneys and things(he knew I didn't eat anything that came from the
INSIDE of an animal. It had to be the outside bits. so I went to ask
what he had eaten....."The bits around the red hot shrapnel - they were
almost cooked" Oh god he was always an optimist and could joke at almost
anything.
Thank you for listening ... Steve
[ No, Steve, thank you for telling us this story ! ]
Ps I wish other DPs would recount their tales. ( I too wish we could get
more stories about DPs, and stories from those in the Siberian camps,
especially with names to help those families find what they are looking
for - even though it ended with death in the depths of the then Soviet
Union. If you have a story that should be told, send it to me and I
will publish here in LABAS )
by Steve Stutcinskas
